


Strange Girl But Effective

by Commissioner



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: BDSM, Breathplay, Caffeine Addiction, Caning, Compersion, Dacryphilia, Daddy Kink, Dirty Talk, Emotional Manipulation, Emotional Sadism, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Enthusiastic Consent, Erna Raban, Feels, Gaslighting, Jearmin - Freeform, Levi being unapologetically sadistic and kinky, Masochism, Multi, Pet Play, Praise Kink, Riding Crops, Sadism, Shameless Smut, Shibari, Shower Sex, Snark, Spanking, Threats, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Verbal Humiliation, Wax Play, almost every kind of sex you can imagine, closed off nerds trying to communicate, cold af broken ofc, ernari, oc with ptsd, occasional dubcon, primal play, really heavy masochism, sad stuff, snark af, springles - Freeform, that's right i made my own ship tag, vanilla problems
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-09-23
Updated: 2017-04-10
Packaged: 2018-04-23 02:38:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 31
Words: 248,081
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4859891
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Commissioner/pseuds/Commissioner
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU within canonverse: Sadistic Levi meets masochistic OC counterpart. Mostly very adult sub/dom dynamic stuff and lots of smut. There's some violence (but in a good way, I think), there's some action, there's some comic relief, there's friendship. Springles and Jearmin as well for people who like fluff.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Runner's High

**Author's Note:**

> So a little about this AU: I try to stay mostly canon? Same nightmare world, same characters.   
> OC's name is Erna pronounced like "Air-nuh," and is one of those old, high german names that I liked because it didn't sound too fancy. And let's be clear: I own my OC. I own the shit out of her.
> 
> This started out as some trash that stuck in my head hard enough that I had to write it to get it out. It wasn't supposed to be taken seriously and I thought I'd drop it after a little while. I think that shows in the early chapters where I'm not trying too hard to keep characters in character and not thinking too much about realistic motivations. Then, somewhere along the way I started taking this story very, very seriously. So the writing is very different in the first chapters vs later chapters and there's a lot of character evolution. This fic sort of made me learn how to write. The transformation of my writing ability itself is interesting to follow throughout the story. Someday I want to go back and edit the earlier chapters so that they sort of sync a little better with the rest of the work, but right now I'm concentrating on just moving the story forward one chapter at a time.

"I'm adding a new member to your squad" Erwin said, walking with Levi through one of the courtyards within the current Survey Corps headquarters. He had arrived about an hour ago after seeing to a short reconnaissance mission. Levi's and about 10 other squads had remained at headquarters. The new strategy of the Survey Corps was to only deploy around half of its forces on any mission outside the walls when possible so as to eliminate the possibility of the complete decimation of the entire Corps at any one time.

Levi frowned. "Don't make things difficult. I don't need the distraction of training and assimilating a new squad member. The team I have now works well together."

"This one will be easy for you. Erna Raban - Graduated 1st in the 106th trainee squad. – "

"Tch. Young." Levi interrupted. He calculated: the 106th was one of the most recent classes of trainees, putting Erna Raban at best around the age of 19, (only five or six years younger than the 104th) and at worst around the age of 16.

Erwin pressed on, ignoring Levi's scowl "She doesn't act it. She could rival you in humorlessness. She's been a regular soldier in the Survey Corps for less than a year and has more titan kills and assists than any other soldier still living, including anyone currently on your squad – "

"Excluding me."

"Excluding you, but you've been doing this longer, old man" Erwin teased Levi, lightly elbowing him in the ribs.

"You're skipping something. Why not promote her to team leader?" Levi asked. He was suspicious of the whole thing.

"I thought about it, only very briefly. It wouldn't work. She doesn't have a will to lead. She wouldn't be very inspiring to a team of soldiers anyway. You'll see. She's passionless - not apt to give highly emotional, motivational speeches off the cuff like your other recruits. She's an invaluable tool, not a leader. You don't ask the hammer to lead the carpenter." Erwin stopped walking and faced Levi, now giving him a serious look.

"So you think I can use her." It was a statement, not a question.

"I think I want her on the kind of high risk missions that your squad is assigned. If there is a mission that we cannot afford to lose, I want her there."

"The members I have now, they've known each other since training. They work perfectly as a team. I don't want a new 'tool' messing up that dynamic. You have the final word and I'll respect your decision, but I'm against it."

"I do have the final word." Erwin paused, "She's with one of the teams on reconnaissance. I'll send her word and she'll report to you here at 7." That was all he had to say. He turned on his heel and walked away, leaving the courtyard before Levi could object further.

"Tch." Though Levi was pissed, he didn't move to follow Erwin. He was on record that this was a bad idea and that was enough. He moved to go back inside the castle that made up the Survey Corps headquarters and to his office and attached living quarters to clean. He thought best while cleaning.

The abandoned castle had been the safest structure found by the Survey Corps in between Wall Maria and Wall Rose. It was considered a temporary headquarters taken up for the purpose of keeping the Survey Corps closer to recapturing Wall Maria and therefore closer to titans, but within a relatively safe distance if they needed to retreat to Wall Rose. Outermost there was a moat, filled with water when there was enough rain but otherwise it was a dry, 16 ft deep ditch. Inside the moat was a stone wall about 30m in height, still intact, on top of which they could set cannons. The only opening in the wall was for the drawbridge. There were about two to three miles of open space between the outer wall and the castle structure where there was open space for training and outbuildings like the stables. Additionally there was a large, main courtyard in the center of the castle which most rooms looked out on. The inside of the castle served mostly to house the Survey Corps members when they were in between missions and the city. Due to the large size of the castle and the relatively small size of the Survey Corps, it was usually possible for each soldier to have their own sleeping quarters. Larger apartments were issued on a basis of seniority. Regular soldiers would get a single room, big enough for a bed and some furniture. Team leaders had larger bedrooms and private bathrooms. Levi and some other squad leaders like Hange had large apartments with several rooms. That is where Levi should have been at 9 o clock, not standing in the entrance courtyard, looking out over the open drawbridge and waiting. Most of the soldiers who had been out had returned from the short reconnaissance mission by 7, there were only three teams still outside the walls. They did not go far, or long, so there were relatively few casualties – only two reported dead. If Erna Raban did not report to him soon, Levi would call it as 3 dead.

Just as he was starting to feel conflicted about his feelings - sadness at any loss of human life but also relief that he wouldn't need to train the new recruit if she turned out to be dead – he saw a lone horse and rider galloping towards the drawbridge. They slowed to a trot once inside the wall and Levi could make her out more clearly. She was dirty, sweaty, and bloody, breathing hard. Though her face was partially hidden under the hood of her green cloak, he could make out her hair color – dark black, making her skin look paler than what was normal for most Survey Corps soldiers since they spend a large portion of their lives outside. Without even slowing her horse to a halt, she dismounted in front of him and saluted mechanically with her fist over her heart. "Erna Raban, reporting for duty." Her eyes were grey and though exhausted, they were emotionless.

Levi circled her, looking her up and down. She was only slightly shorter than him and lean, all around smaller than he expected based on what Erwin had told him. He stopped in front of her, staring at her and still saying nothing. He was annoyed. Half of him was pleased that one more soldier survived a mission outside and half of him felt his life would be easier if she had disappeared. Her rigid, emotionless expression did nothing to make him feel less annoyed. She should look remorseful or at least slightly anxious. He wanted to unnerve her, so he stared at her in silence for what seemed like an eternity.

Erna's body was weak and it was physically difficult to continue standing at attention, but mentally she felt nothing but relief. The moment she got the message that she was being removed from her team and folded into Captain Levi's squad, she felt the shock of being untethered, without clear purpose, "free." She hated it. She rode as fast as she could back to headquarters to again be under someone's command and to carry out orders.

Erna Raban, unlike other trainees, had flourished under the harsh atmosphere of the military's training camp. She executed any order with the quickness and efficiency of an automaton, working herself to exhaustion, never complaining, never seeming to have a rebellious bone in her body or a contrary thought in her head. Erna was happiest in the military system. Before joining the military, she had felt utterly lost, without any sense of self preservation. In the military everything was simple: her superior officers ordered Erna to kill titans and she did so, they ordered her to save other soldiers from harm and she did so, they ordered her to continue living and she continued to do so. Erna was afraid of nothing except being on her own again with no one to tell her to survive. She feared that without outside encouragement, she would not feel the drive and would give up on surviving. When training was over and it was time for everyone to decide which branch they would join, there was no question or hesitation for Erna. She chose to join the Survey Corps because they were the least idle, they would always have something for her to do. Unlike most people, she hated to have free time. She never wanted "time to think," she wanted only to act and the best way to be constantly acting and executing quickly was to leave the thinking to others.

For the duration of her hard gallop, all the way from her team's position to the point at which she stood now, she let herself think only of finding her new superior officer, the whole time pushing away a feeling of terror at the thought of being free and alone. So now, although her body ached and her muscles were weak and wanting to rebel, she was grateful and relieved to be standing at attention. Even if rain began to pour in buckets around them and titans began tearing at the walls, she would stand at attention, her mind a blank slate, until told to do otherwise.

"You're late," said Levi after almost a minute.

Without hesitation Erna replied, "I apologize, Captain Levi."

Levi waited, again trying to unnerve this new recruit with his silence. Her expression remained the same and she showed no sign of speaking further. He had to ask, "You don't want to tell me your excuse for being late?"

"You don't seem like the type to accept excuses, so no, Sir," she replied with complete honesty.

Inwardly, the response enraged Levi, but outwardly he wouldn't show it. She was right, he didn't accept excuses, but he had wanted her to make one so that he could tell her that excuses were unacceptable and discipline her, shame her, do something to make her change her expression. In a way her decision to not try to make an excuse took some of his power away. He could not have been more annoyed.

Levi looked down at Erna coldly, "Start running... Laps... Now."

Erna made no response but to nod and began to remove the pack from her shoulders.

"Keep your pack on and your gear. Go!" Levi could no longer hide his anger. It didn't startle Erna, she didn't flinch, she just took off running. A soldier from the special Veterinary Corps came and took her horse away to one of the stables to be cared for. Levi stood still where he was, fists clenched.

Krista, Armin, and Jean watched out one of the castle windows.

"I heard we're adding a squad member. That must be her. Erna Raban." Armin said quietly.

Krista's brow furrowed, "She looks so young, poor girl."

Armin replied thoughtfully, "The intelligence I have says she's 19… And she has more titan kills and kill assists than most of us combined…"

Krista only continued to look worried, watching the dirty, exhausted girl run laps around the castle in the dark. Jean's jaw dropped briefly, but he caught himself and tried to appear and sound disinterested, "Ah well, it won't matter if Levi kills her. I've never seen him actually stick around to watch a recruit run laps. She must have really pissed him off."

Erna was on her second lap. Each circuit around the castle was about 2 to 4 miles depending on how close one stuck to the walls. Everything hurt and it was hard to breathe, but she was good at ignoring signals her body sent to her. She let herself hear and think of nothing but her blood rushing, except each time she ran past Levi she listened in case he should tell her to stop. He wouldn't. Despite her best effort her pace got slower and slower, but she did continue on at what could technically be called a run. Finally, at the end of her fourth lap Levi barked at her to stop, only because it had begun to rain and he didn't want to be out in it. She stopped without turning to face him, her head rolled backwards, eyes looking to the sky her mouth opened for a moment and caught some rain. Her arms hung uselessly and she seemed suspended. As Levi began to walk over to her, she fell forward flat on her face, completely unconscious. Levi put his foot in her ribs and shoved her over onto her back. Her face was now even dirtier than when she arrived and now there was grass in her hair. He waited two seconds. "Get up. I'm not carrying you, you're filthy," he nudged her with his boot again.

Erna's eyes opened, for a moment she looked disoriented, even confused, then her eyes affixed on Levi, looking at him questioningly.

"Get up."

She rolled over and onto her knees, hands still in the dirt, everything aching, even her tongue. She paused there because while she did very much want to, she knew that she could not get up. She knew her body had limits.

"Come on, I'm not carrying you," Levi said as he knelt down to take her left arm and drape it over his shoulders. He pulled her up to a standing position and put his right arm around her waist, "I'll help you if you make the effort to walk."

Erna put one foot in front of the other. Everything was a haze, but that didn't particularly bother her.

Levi continued to admonish her, "First you arrive two hours late, then you make me stand out in the rain, and now you're getting me dirty." They passed into the castle, made some turns down some corridors. He stopped in front of a wooden door like all the others and while still supporting her pushed it open with his foot, "This is your room." It was small, just big enough for the bed, dresser, and washbasin. He helped her over to the bed and let her fall onto it. "Be in my office at 7am sharp. Don't keep me waiting and don't come without cleaning yourself up first," Levi said this as he left, not bothering to look back or make sure she comprehended, he closed the door behind him.

Erna felt the bliss of being utterly exhausted and lying in bed. She fell asleep without taking off her cloak or gear. She didn't even move to pull the blanket over herself.


	2. Uncharacteristic

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Some hints of sub/dom-ness. Also, I promise that more characters come into this soon. Hang in there with me as I get my OC established. She is a complicated lady (not really.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I do breaks within my chapters. The formatting was tough with the place I was posting this before AO3, so my system for denoting a break or a new scene became a line of commas and periods. I've grown attached to the look of it.

Erna Raban had a strong internal clock that woke her up at 6:40am. If not for that, she could have slept for 18 more hours. She opened her eyes and stretched, sliding her legs over the edge of the bed until her feet were flat on the floor and popping herself up and out of bed rather than taking her time to wake up. She finally took off her pack, then her cloak, and unbuckled and removed the harness of her 3DMG. Her muscles were tight and she stretched some more, even though she knew no amount of stretching would relieve the soreness and fatigue she was feeling… for the first time in a long time she had come up against her limit while running around the castle for Captain Levi and in a way she had loved it. She had almost felt a kind of euphoria just before stopping and passing out. She had heard something once about a carefree, blissful feeling that overtakes a person just before dying of starvation or drowning and she thought it must be like that. Now, instead of bliss she felt pain, which she thought wasn't too bad either.

She undressed and cleaned herself up, thoroughly scrubbing her face before putting on fresh clothes. She brushed out her long, black curls and pulled them back into a tight bun again. She couldn't remember the last time she had worn her hair down and yet she never thought to cut it. She looked in the mirror and saw some stray blades of grass she missed in her long, side swept bangs. She picked up the hairbrush again and went to brush them out, but then stopped herself. She looked in the mirror again. She reasoned with herself, "It's only two blades of grass. He won't even notice. And if he does notice, what will he even do?" but she knew that deep down she was doing this because, for some reason that she couldn't explain, she hoped that he would notice.

At 6:59am Erna knocked twice on the door to Captain Levi's office. She didn't hear him give her permission to enter, but she did anyway reasoning that it would be better to enter without permission than to be even one second late.

Levi sat behind his desk with his back to the door, facing the large windows of his office that looked out onto the inner courtyard of the castle.

Erna closed the door and moved to the center of the room. Levi didn't turn around. She wasn't sure he was even aware of her presence and was about to clear her throat when he finally said, "Sit."

Erna looked around the room, "Sir. There aren't any chairs."

"Then kneel," Levi's voice was cold. Erna dropped to her knees and waited. "Why are you here?" he finally asked.

"You told me to be here at 7."

"No, not here," he was frustrated at her obtuseness, "Why are you HERE? Why join the Survey Corps? What's your reason?"

Erna had never thought about the answer to this question because no one had ever asked it of her, though she had heard other trainees in her class talk about their reasons for joining up from time to time, she never felt moved to join the conversation. What did it matter the reason they were there so long as they were there? Right now, more than anything, she wondered what Captain Levi wanted to hear. She couldn't guess the right answer, so she decided to answer as honestly as possible. "To be useful," was the most concise and accurate summation of her reason that she could come up with. That appeared to be good enough because he didn't press her further on the subject.

"How many titan kills and kill assists do you have?" he asked, but he almost sounded bored. Like he had to ask but wasn't interested in the answer.

"I don't know," Erna paused, "Not enough."

Her answer caught Levi off guard. It was the first time her voice showed any emotion. He took a second and tried to sound unfazed in his response, "There isn't a soldier in the entire military who doesn't know their kill and assist statistic and you're telling me you really don't know when you have one of the highest on record?"

"What does it matter?" this she almost shouted. She composed herself again, "No matter how many titans I kill, it's never enough. Why keep track? Is there a number at which I'll stop? Is there a number of titan kills I can reach that will take away the guilt of surviving when so many others die?" She felt she was being too emotional. She didn't like conversations. She liked to keep her answers to questions brief and completely to the point but something about Captain Levi and the way he spoke to her so coldly, almost contemptuously, tore at her and made her feel uncharacteristically emotional. She felt like she had just lost a small battle, and she decided to shut up.

Levi couldn't deny that he was moved by the girl's sad sincerity, but also he felt something else – some sort of smug pride or satisfaction at having broken through her stony, emotionless mask. He got up from his chair and stood in front of her. She was still kneeling, head down and shoulders hunched. Levi leaned down on one knee and tilted her chin up to look at him. Her eyes were sad and beautiful, but otherwise she had regained her composure and erased any other signs of the emotions her voice had betrayed. Not even her lip quivered. It was a pity, he thought, he had wanted to see her cry. Then he noticed, "You didn't even bother to brush your hair before coming here." He released her face and stood up, walking back to his desk.

"Sir! I did!" Erna stood up.

As quickly as she said it, Levi turned on his heel and stood in front of her again. He snatched the grass from her bangs, taking some of her hair with it. "Then what is this?"

"Sir…" Erna didn't know what to say. And she didn't understand what she was feeling. Hadn't this been her goal? Otherwise why would she have left her bangs as they were? It didn't make any sense, but somehow his anger thrilled her.

Levi turned away again going to sit in his desk chair facing the windows. "This actually makes things easier. I had been trying to think of something for you to do besides training, since you couldn't even manage running laps last night. If you're so intent on being a mess, you're assigned to stable duty until I order otherwise."

Erna stood rooted to the floor, not in defiance, the order didn't bother her. It was just… "Um, Captain Levi, it's just... –"

Levi turned around. "What?"

"It's just that I skipped dinner last night and breakfast this morning, so could I –"

"No. Eat when you've finished work."

"Hai!" Erna saluted and left.

Levi wasn't unaware that he was being cruel. He wondered why. He had planned on making things difficult for the new recruit even before meeting her, but he hadn't planned on going this far. There was something about her that he couldn't pin down. It was like she invited his cruelty. She made it satisfying to go too far in punishing her. He watched the rest of his team run through training exercises in the courtyard below just in time to spot Hange interrupt them to take Eren by the arm and begin talking and smiling as she dragged the poor boy away. Levi opened a window and shouted down "Hange! What are you doing?!"

"Ah, Levi, I only need him for a few experiments! I'll bring him right back! No worries!" She ran into the castle, dragging Eren with her.

"Hange Zoe!" he yelled after her, but it was too late, they were out of sight. Even if they hadn't been, she wouldn't have stopped. "Stubborn, single-minded, shit-glasses…" he muttered to himself and slammed the window shut.

.,.,.,.,.,.,.,..,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,

At 9am Erna was nearly finished mucking the twentieth stall in the first barn, so she was a third of the way through the sixty total stalls. "That's just this one stable," she thought to herself. There were 10 stables with sixty stalls each. She didn't know how many she was expected to clean, but it wouldn't bother her if she had to muck all six hundred. Dirty work was fine with her. What was bothering her was her stomach. She felt like an idiot. "Why did I ask permission to eat? I could just as easily have kept my mouth shut and stopped by the kitchen on the way here." She worked faster. Her own behavior was puzzling her and she wasn't used to it. "So stupid," she whined. She finished mucking the stall and tossed her pitchfork into the wheelbarrow to move to the next one. "Aish, what's wrong with me? My brain must be addled from starvation and exhaustion." She took the handles of the wheelbarrow, lifted, and looked up to see Levi standing outside the stall. She dropped the wheelbarrow and blushed, embarrassed at the possibility that he had caught her talking to herself.

Levi had caught most of Erna's conversation with herself and was enjoying her embarrassment. "Take a break," he tossed her a roll wrapped in a napkin. She caught it and for a second looked confused. Then her eyes lit up and she clutched the roll to her chest. It almost made him smile, not because he had made her happy, but because he had broken her to the point that a five minute break and a roll were now a reason to be overjoyed.

Erna jumped up and down, "Domo arigato, Levi-sama!"

"Five minutes. I want this and the second stable clean before dark," he scowled at her and she straightened up, turning serious again, and saluted.

"Hai, Captain!" she waited for him to turn around and walk away. The second that he was out of sight she let out a big sigh and sat down in the clean straw, inhaling the roll in only a few seconds. She sat perfectly still for the remainder of her break, thinking of absolutely nothing. Then she shot up and got back to work, completely reenergized.

Levi came back just at sunset, expecting Erna to be nowhere near finished. He walked through the first barn which was spotless, even by his standards. He went to the second barn and found her just finishing the very last stall. He was actually impressed, but would never let her know it, "They need to bring the horses in from grazing. Are you finished?"

Erna tossed her pitchfork into the wheelbarrow and saluted, "Hai, Captain Levi! I await further instruction."

Coming from anyone else, that last statement would have sounded sarcastic or patronizing. This girl, however, sounded genuinely enthused at the prospect of more work. It was irritating. "First of all get yourself cleaned up, you're disgusting." He turned around and began walking back to the castle, "Beyond that I don't care what you do. Stable duty seems to agree with you. Same thing tomorrow."

Erna followed him, but stopped at the stable entrance and looked out at the sunset turning the sky into a composition of fiery reds and oranges. She stretched her arms over her head and thought for the first time in a long time that sunsets were rather beautiful. She took a few deep breaths of fresh air before running back to the castle.


	3. Unrequited Love

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Here are the other characters I promised! Also some intense violence, but not so much in an angsty, victimization-y kind of way... you'll see. There's a finally a hint of smut towards the end. It's a teaser. Also, there's a quote from the anime! Which I do not own. Did I mention that I don't own Attack on Titan in any form? I don't. Boy, disclaimers are fun to work into a brief chapter summary.

Erna emerged from one of the shared washrooms on her room's corridor after one of her longest baths in days. It felt like a whole new job in itself to scrub away the smell of the stables, but she always eventually succeeded and actually looked presentable. "Even Levi couldn't disapprove," she said to herself, "At least not justifiably." She had begun to count on the idea that he would always find something to disapprove of. He was beginning to seem almost predictable that way. She got faster and more efficient at mucking the horses' stalls every day, but instead of praise he heaped more work on her. Earlier in the day she had finished cleaning three of the ten stables well before dark, so he ordered her to scrub out and refill the water buckets in each of the stalls she'd cleaned. She only just finished as the colors of the sunset were fading to black.

Erna arrived at the kitchen where the Survey Corps members on kitchen detail were just starting to put things away. In her week at headquarters so far she learned that for the most part everyone ate dinner around 6pm, but she never finished working in time to eat with everyone else. This suited her just fine as she was completely indifferent when it came to the company of others. Socialization was something she could take or leave. The kitchen staff offered to heat something up for her, but she told them not to trouble themselves, "Food is still food whether it's warm or not." She took her dinner and went to the adjoining dining room filled with long tables and sat alone at the end of the nearest one.

Jean, Eren, Armin, Mikasa, and Connie were seated a couple of tables away. The squad had finished training later than usual thanks to more interference from Hange. Jean was the only one who noticed Erna come in and sit down. He left his seat and went and sat across from her at the other table. Armin nodded to Eren, "That's our new member, Erna Raban."

Mikasa added, "This is the first we've seen her so close. So far we've only noticed her from a distance when Levi makes her run laps." Seeing another soldier being made to run laps was like seeing a burning building. If you saw it out of the corner of your eye, you would always stop what you were doing, watch, and feel glad that it wasn't happening to you.

Eren stood up, "We should go say hi."

Connie stopped him, "Leave Jean alone for a couple minutes. I get the feeling he's working on something and it'll be fun to see him crash and burn."

Eren looked at Connie, confused, "What does that mean?"

Connie simply said, "He has a thing for girls with black hair."

Mikasa smirked. Eren sat down, "I thought it was weird for him to be so welcoming." Everyone tried to act like they were very interested in their food and they were not at all eavesdropping on the other table.

Jean took the seat across from Erna who didn't raise her eyes or stop eating. He didn't let this fact deter him, "I'm Jean Kirstein, one of your new team members."

Erna stopped eating and looked him in the eyes, "Erna Raban." She shook his hand, but that was as far as her politeness went. She went right back to eating.

"So where are you from?" Jean pressed on.

"106th Trainee Squad."

"No, I mean before that. Which district?" Jean clarified, thinking she didn't understand the question. Erna's facial expression didn't change in the slightest and she was silent for a few seconds before he decided that she didn't hear him and he started to ask again.

"My hearing is fine," Erna cut him off before he could get another word out. "I don't like to talk about personal things."

She didn't sound angry, maybe just tired. Everyone knew how hard Levi had been working her since the night she arrived. Jean was still pretty confident that he had a shot with her. "Sorry, but don't you think it's a good idea to get to know each other if we're going to be on the same squad?"

Erna finished eating before looking Jean in the eye and saying calmly, "I know your name and face. That's all I need. I don't see how sharing life stories will effect how well we work together."

Jean heard Connie snicker at the other table and it set him off. He stood up and slammed his fist down on the table shouting, "You stuck up little bitch!"

In a flash, Erna reached out and grabbed his wrist with her right hand, pulling him forward until his head hit the table and she held him there with her left forearm pressing down on his neck. All the while she didn't change her calm expression. "You shouldn't lose your temper. It makes you vulnerable."

Mikasa and Armin watched wide-eyed, but Connie and Eren stifled laughter.

Erna planned to hold him there until he stopped struggling and showed signs of being ready to behave civilly. Only a familiar sound stopped her.

"Raban!" Levi's voice boomed from the dining room entrance.

Erna released Jean, and stood stiffly at attention, fist over her heart, "Sir!"

Connie felt more badly for the girl than for Jean and tried to put in a word for her defense, "Captain Levi, it wasn't her fault." But Levi showed no signs of even hearing him.

Jean rubbed his neck and shot a look at Connie, "What the fuck?" Then he saw Levi quickly striding toward them. For a second he was worried that they both would be in trouble, but when he looked at Levi's face he saw that he was only focused on Erna like he wasn't even there, and what he saw in Levi's eyes terrified him enough that now he too was jumping to the girl's defense, "Captain Levi, it's not what it looks like. She was showing me a new hand to hand combat technique and –"

"I don't want to hear it!" Levi roared and the room fell deadly silent. Everyone looked on in shock as Levi grabbed the still calm-faced Erna by the arm and pulled her so hard her feet almost left the ground. He strode over to the door to the kitchen and threw her through it. The door closed behind them.

Eren glared at Jean who held his hands up like as if to say What did I do?

"Asshole," Eren said under his breath. "This isn't right. I'm going to stop him." He started towards the kitchen.

Mikasa stopped him, "Leave it alone."

Eren looked at her in confusion, "What do you mean leave it alone?"

Mikasa started stacking everyone's plates, "I think she likes it."

Now everyone turned to look at Mikasa. Armin was the first to say, "That's insane."

"Did you see her expression? She wasn't the least bit afraid. I think she's completely and hopelessly in love with him and doesn't know any way to express it other than to let him take his anger out on her."

"That is the craziest thing I've ever heard you say," Eren responded. "What do you know about love anyway?"

Mikasa rolled her eyes, "You're right, I don't know anything about hopeless or unrequited love." This time Armin stifled a laugh. Eren didn't get it. Mikasa sighed, "Now, does anyone want to take our plates back to the kitchen?"

Eren wasn't sure what he wanted to do after listening to that crazy nonsense. Connie volunteered and took the plates from Mikasa, not because he wanted to be brave and try to help Erna, but because now his curiosity was piqued and he wanted to see what was happening in there. He took two steps toward the kitchen before they all heard a very loud crash come from behind the door and he took two steps back, set the dishes back on the table, and said "Maybe we should just leave them here for now." They all nodded in agreement and left the dining room together, avoiding the kitchen.

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Erna lost her footing as Levi threw her into the kitchen and she fell to the floor. Levi stared down at her, fuming. He heard a dish fall to the floor and looked up to see the kitchen staff frozen, staring on in shock. "Leave!" he yelled at them loudly enough to jar them out of their shock and out the other door in less than two seconds. He looked back down at Erna who was now on her knees, head bowed down at the floor. He drove his knee hard enough into her ribs to send her sliding across the floor into one of the kitchen counters. "This is just my personal philosophy… I think pain is the most effective punishment." He stepped towards her. She didn't flinch or make any move to try to get away from him like a normal person would in her situation. He grabbed her shoulders, pulled her up to a standing position, and slapped her hard across the face with the back of his hand. She reeled away from him, but was able to catch herself on one of the counters and keep herself from falling. She lifted a hand to her lips and wiped away a trickle of blood. Levi landed a kick against the other side of her ribs, again disappointed that she didn't flinch or wince or make any kind of sign of fear or move to save herself.

There was no doubt in his mind that whatever had just happened, Jean had been the instigator. He knew that Jean was occasionally an idiot and never had any control over his emotions. And he knew by now that Erna did nothing without reason. But he was enjoying this. More and more when he looked at Erna he saw a beautiful marble statue begging to be broken, but this past week she had given him no justifications or opportunities to break her like he had that first day. Everything he asked of her she carried out perfectly. No matter how much he asked of her or how far he pushed her, he hadn't been able to break through that emotionless mask again. When she fell she made no move to try to get up. He pressed his boot against her face, holding her down to the floor. He could have sworn he heard her make a small moan of pleasure, but that would be insane. He wrote that off as his imagination.

Levi delivered one more kick to her shoulder and told her to stand up. She did so with some difficulty and he searched her face. She looked a little dazed. That wasn't good enough. "You're going to clean every inch of this kitchen until it's spotless. I want you to be able to eat off of every surface in here."

She actually saluted, "Hai, Captain Levi."

This made him completely lose his temper. "And stop being so goddamned complacent about it!" Levi roared at her, throwing the nearest thing, a large copper bottom pot, across the room. He saw her eyes widen, but she looked more puzzled than afraid.

"Sir… I don't understand."

It was hopeless. He couldn't order her to show feelings or fear like a normal person. Even if he could, he wouldn't because that would be too easy. It would take all the fun out of it. He stepped closer to her and stood only inches away, trying to intimidate her. She stood perfectly still, not even moving her eyes to look up at his face. The way she smelled when she wasn't working in the stables, when she was actually clean, was intoxicating. He couldn't stand it and he stepped away, turning around, "I want you to scrub this place until your hands are raw and bleeding. I don't care how long it takes," and he left her.

Erna held out her hands and looked at them. Her palms were pretty thoroughly calloused from working in the stables. She thought it would take a lot to make her skin crack.

She licked her lower lip. It stung and tasted like blood. She loved the feeling. She touched her ribs lightly where he first kicked her and smiled to herself. She knew that logically she should feel upset or angry, but she was happy. Every bruise would be a reminder that he had at least touched her. Her first step was to hang her brown jacket on a chair. She took a bucket from the corner, filled it with hot soapy water, and found a scrub brush. She looked around; the kitchen definitely hadn't had a really thorough cleaning in a long time. She decided to start with the grease-caked stoves first and clean the floors last.

Levi came, presumably to check on her, every hour. He said nothing. Sometimes he ran a finger along a counter and just left, and sometimes he sat in one of the chairs at the small kitchen table and watched her for at least five minutes. Each time Erna didn't pause in her work or look at him, but she could feel it when he was staring at her and it made her face burn.

The fifth time Levi entered the kitchen to check on Erna, at 2am, he opened the door to find her standing at attention in the center of the room. He wondered how long she had been standing like that, waiting for him to come and inspect her work, but he didn't ask. He walked around slowly, scrutinizing everything, looking for any imperfection. It was impossible. Right now the kitchen was probably the cleanest room in the whole castle. He picked up a spoon and it was polished clean enough to now be used as a small mirror. He was about to give up on finding anything he could criticize when he looked up at the pots and pans hanging over the stoves. They were all perfectly cleaned but one. He took it down from where it was hanging and recognized it as the one he had thrown earlier. He held it out to Erna and asked, "What is this?"

"I guess I missed it, Sir," her voice was too calm and measured.

"You thought to hang it up, but somehow you forgot to clean it? Is that what you're telling me?"

"I have no other explanation, Sir."

Levi wouldn't let himself lose his temper again. He threw the pot into one of the sinks and said very calmly and coldly, "Get down." She fell to the floor on her knees without hesitation. "You're going to do push-ups and every time you go down I want you to lick the floor. At least one stone in this floor is going to be clean."

Erna did exactly as he asked. Licking the floor didn't bother her; it only tasted of cold, clean stone. She knew that she had scrubbed every inch of the floor until it was clean enough to perform surgery on. The pot she had hung up without cleaning was completely intentional.

Levi circled around her, not at all surprised that she did exactly as he said without protest. He put his boot between her shoulder blades and pressed down to make it harder for her. Again he thought he heard her moan. At 2:30am he told her to stop and let her up. "Be in the inner courtyard at 7 for training exercises," he had plans for her.

After Levi left her, Erna went to her room and fell into bed. She felt that same mix of exhaustion and bliss from her first night at the castle. She licked her lower lip and made it sting. She moved her hand between her legs and imagined Levi biting her lip and making it bleed again…


	4. Secretary

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's weird: I don't particularly dislike Jean as a character, but I constantly pick on him in my writing. I swear I don't hate him. Some of my best friends are Jearmin yaoi smut.  
> I don't own Attack on Titan in any way, shape, or form. But I own this thing I've written and my OC, who I'm growing very fond of.

Erna joined her team members for the first time in the inner courtyard which functioned as a training space for the Survey Corps. Unlike the Wall Garrison and the Military Police, the Survey Corps never stopped training. If they wanted their soldiers to survive their expeditions they couldn't afford to lose any physical fitness or let their reflexes get slow, so training was nearly constant.

Jean approached her, "Hey I'm, um, really sorry about last night." It wasn't an entirely accurate statement. He wasn't very sorry about what he had said, but he was sorry that she was caught by Levi. Truthfully he knew he was only apologizing for two reasons: 1) because his team members would continue to give him shit if he didn't and 2) even though she was very strange, he still found the new girl pretty cute. So he tried to make himself sound as sincere as possible.

"Oh it's okay. You know, if not for what happened I would probably still be out mucking stalls today. Maybe I should be thanking you," Erna gave him a brief smile and extended her hand.

It was weird. From the noises they had heard coming from the kitchen last night they were all pretty sure Levi had given her a somewhat severe beating, but to Jean she seemed so much happier this morning than when he had tried to talk to her at dinner. She even smiled. Instead of shaking her hand, he pointed to the cut on her lower lip, "I hope that wasn't on account of me."

She looked confused for a second, and then brought the tips of her gloved fingers to her lip, "Oh I'd almost forgotten. It's nothing. It'll be completely healed up in a day or two." On that last thought she almost sounded disappointed. Jean couldn't make sense of the girl. He was about to offer to introduce her to the rest of the squad, but then Levi showed up to oversee training.

Levi looked Erna up and down. It never made sense how no matter how little sleep he let her have she was always on time. Today she even looked bright-eyed. He wondered how dark her bruises were under her uniform and felt a slight twinge of disappointment that he wouldn't get to see them. He noticed her leather gloves. They were military issue and brown to match the soldiers' jackets, but they were an optional part of the uniform, so most didn't wear them. He remembered that her hands would be raw and sensitive from all the cleaning. "You two," Levi motioned towards Jean and Erna, "Pair off and spar."

Erna nodded and faced Jean. Jean looked at Levi, "Hand to hand combat? We haven't done that since the Trainee Corps."

"Weren't you the one who wanted to learn new techniques?" Levi asked, calling him on his bluff from last night.

Jean groaned and looked to his teammates who were watching. Connie gave him a grin and thumbs up. He faced off with Erna and made a move towards her. Without time to notice what happened he was on his back looking at the sky with her boot on his chest. "Fuck." She leaned down and offered her hand to help him up, "What the fuck was that?" He took her hand and let her help him to his feet.

Erna just shrugged. She took two steps back while he dusted himself off. He resolved that this time he wouldn't be beaten and again made a move at her, this time almost grabbing her arm before ending up on his back with her boot on his chest. He heard Connie snickering at him again. This time he didn't let Erna help him up.

They sparred again and again with the exact same result no matter what tactic Jean tried. Levi was thoroughly disappointed. His point in making them do hand to hand combat training wasn't to teach Jean a lesson about lying. His intention was that during the course of the sparring sessions Erna would take some hits to her fresh bruises. He cursed Hange under his breath for stealing Eren for experiments again. He was the strongest hand-to-hand fighter on his squad by a long shot. It was becoming clear that no one else would stand a chance against the girl. He walked over to the pair as Jean dusted himself off for the 6th time and motioned for them to stop, "Maybe this requires a handicap." He loosened the white cravat from his neck and removed it. He pulled Erna's arms behind her back and tightened the cravat around them, tying her hands and arms tightly together. He stepped away again. This time Jean was overconfident and careless. He rushed at Erna headlong to tackle her at her midsection and knock her down. Erna slid her right foot back, lowering her center of gravity and met his forehead with her own. His forward momentum made the effect of her headbutt worse than she had probably intended. He was on his back again, but this time he was clearly unconscious.

Levi strode over to them. "Jean," he tapped him with his boot. No response, but he could see that the boy was still breathing. He was probably just a little or a lot concussed. "Sasha and Connie, take him to the infirmary." Sasha and Connie hurried over and while they discussed who should carry his shoulders and who should carry his feet Levi stood in front of Erna who didn't look the least bit worried or remorseful. Typical, he thought. "Why did you do that?"

"Sir, I assessed the situation and could see no other way to neutralize my opponent without the use of my arms," she said this in her customary mechanical, emotionless tone.

"It didn't occur to you to just let him tackle you?"

Erna cocked her head to the side, looking truly puzzled, "No, Sir, that thought didn't occur to me. Is that what you wanted me to do?"

Levi brought his palm to his face and shook his head in amazement and frustration. Just then, Hange came over with Eren in tow.

Hange looked down her glasses at the unconscious Jean, "Oooh what happened here?"

"Hange, give me back Eren and take this one to experiment on. She's stranger than you," Levi turned Erna around and began untying her arms.

Hange brought her face uncomfortably close to Erna's, "Yay, a new subject!" She walked around and inspected Erna. "Does she transform into a titan?"

"Not as far as I know, but get her out of my sight for a while anyway," Levi finished untying Erna's arms and shoved her to the waiting Hange who immediately locked arms with the confused and slightly worried-looking girl and led her back to the castle, talking at her the whole time.

Eren stood beside Levi, relieved to be free from Hange, and pointed to the unconscious Jean, "What happened? Did he try to hit on the new girl again?"

Levi turned to look at Eren and said coldly and quietly, "Laps."

"Huh?" Eren didn't understand what he had said wrong.

"Laps for everyone!" Levi shouted to his squad. Everyone groaned except for Sasha and Connie who picked up Jean and began carrying him away.

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When he finished running his squad into the ground, Levi paid a visit to Hange. He found her sitting at her desk going over some things, probably about Eren. He knocked on the door frame, "Where's Raban?"

Hange looked up, "Oh, I let her go hours ago."

"She was too much trouble?"

"No! Exactly the opposite, she's the best assistant I've ever had! So efficient! She filed and cross-catalogued all of my research notes, she organized all of my books, she cleaned everything. I finally ran out of things for her to do and had to let her go."

Levi looked around and noticed Hange's office was a lot cleaner than he was used to. He couldn't see a speck of dust anywhere, "The little brat."

"Huh?" Hange was going to ask Levi what he meant, but he was already storming out the door and down the corridor.

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Levi went to the infirmary to check on Jean and found Erna in a chair next to Jean's cot. She was resting her chin in her hands and quietly watching Jean's face. He appeared to still be unconscious. Levi walked over to the foot of the boy's bed, "Is he in a coma?"

Erna turned her head and gave him a tired look, "No, he was awake earlier. They say he has a concussion, so he's going to be a little sleepy and dizzy." She stood up and stretched her arms over her head, "Much the way I feel. Maybe I have a concussion too. I'm going to bed early unless there's anything else."

"You have a cobweb in your hair," Levi said matter of factly. "Why do you always insist on being such a mess?"

Erna pulled her hair out of its bun and shook it out. Levi was surprised at how long it was. It fell to the middle of her back in large, beautiful curls. He thought if you put a dress on her right now she wouldn't look at all out of place at a ball in a mansion of the inner wall. She interrupted his thoughts with a look, inquiring with her eyes whether she got the piece of cobweb out. She didn't. Annoyed, Levi took a white handkerchief from his pocket and said, "Hange says you make a better secretary than a soldier," as he picked it out for her.

Erna gave him a cold, angry look. After a pause, she said, "Her instructions are clear and easy to follow."

"What is that supposed to mean?"

Erna started walking away, but stopped in the door of the infirmary and turned around. There was now more sadness to her eyes than anger, "If you hadn't wanted me to spar and instead wanted me to be a punching bag, I wish you would have just told me… I would have done it."

She left without waiting for a response. Levi didn't have a quick response to that anyway. He was a little shocked at how devastatingly accurate her assessment was. She was much smarter than he had given her credit for. He couldn't be blamed, he decided. Who could tell what was going on behind those blank eyes most of the time?

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Erna kicked the door to her room open and threw her jacket against the wall, "Better secretary than a soldier my ass!" She kicked her boots off and sent them flying, "How the fuck would he know? He never lets me be a soldier." She sat on her bed, leaning against the wall and pulling her knees up to her chest. She had been so tired before, but now she felt too worked up to sleep. She knew it wasn't like her to get emotional, but Levi had a talent for saying exactly the right thing to rattle her. She loved it and hated it. Finally she took her gloves off and looked at her still raw hands, "I'm just a maid most of the time."

Before she could pout, the brunette, green-eyed man who had been with Hange earlier appeared in her door frame. She silently wished she had thought to close it.

"Hey, I just wanted to introduce myself since I missed you at training. I'm Eren." If he overheard her little tantrum, he made no sign of it.

"Hange talks a lot about you," the girl said very matter of factly.

Eren smiled, "Yeah, she's pretty obsessive." He watched her unfold her knees and start putting her hair back up into a bun. "So I heard you kicked Jean's ass."

"Not on purpose."

"Ah, well, that's a shame. No one would blame you if it was. Anyway, I'm glad Levi's finally letting you train with us."

She gave him one of her rare and subtle smiles, "I was getting really good at cleaning stalls…"

Eren laughed, "Yeah, I had to do a lot of that when I first joined the Survey Corps too. Just when you get good at something he'll switch you to something else." This made the girl crease her brow in thought and frown to herself. Eren thought it seemed like no one could take a joke today, or it was just that this girl was as humorless as Levi. What a perfect match. He decided to leave it alone, "Anyway, I'll see you tomorrow." He left and closed her door.

Erna lay down on her back and looked at her hands. "I must be really bad at cleaning then," she said quietly to herself.


	5. Abnormal Psychology 101

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Emotional Climax! Get some!  
> Finally something approaching real smut. You're welcome.

"It isn't working out," Levi said calmly. He stood looking out the window of Erwin's office.

"I'm sure you don't mean the new girl. It hasn't even been a month, how can you sound so certain?" Erwin normally trusted Levi's judgment almost completely, but this time it didn't make sense. He had been sure that putting his best soldier and his best squad leader together was a no-brainer.

"It just isn't. It's my recommendation that you reassign her."

Erwin frowned. "You're going to have to explain yourself if I'm going to consider making such a move."

Levi sighed, "Little things. Small, almost indiscernible acts of defiance, such that you couldn't even be sure that they're intentional, but too smart to be accidental."

"Such as…?" Erwin asked.

"If I order her to perform maintenance on her 3DMG she does everything but sharpen her blades. If I make her clean the kitchen, she'll polish every surface but conspicuously leave one pot dirty. If I ordered her to boil water, I'm sure she would find a way to burn it. I spend more time reprimanding and punishing her than training my squad." He paused and then went on, "I know you think highly of her, but she's only been a distraction. She needs to go. Give her to Hange. I've talked to her about it and she thinks the girl would be a great asset."

Erwin frowned and sat down at his desk. He opened a drawer and started going through papers, "The behavior you're describing is highly uncharacteristic of Raban. I'm not saying I disbelieve you, but given her history this news is fairly shocking." He pulled out the file he was looking for and slid it over to Levi who now stood in front of his desk, "If you look at her file you won't find one instance of even slight insubordination."

Levi took the file and flipped through without really looking at it, "Even so…"

Erwin didn't let him continue, "Have you talked to Private Raban about this?"

"No. It probably says something in here," Levi said, waving the file at Erwin "about her being somewhat impossible to talk to."

Erwin smiled at him warmly, "All I'm going to ask is that you talk to her and sleep on it. If you don't change your mind, then come again tomorrow and I'll sign off on the paperwork to transfer her to Hange's squad."

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Levi sat at his desk going through Erna's file, even though he was sure nothing in it would change his mind. He read it more out of curiosity. He went through the notes made by various trainers and team leaders.  
"Utterly compliant, carries out any and all orders to perfection."  
"Socially indifferent to her peers, but still works well within a team."  
"Strange girl but effective."  
"Cold, mechanical, efficient titan-killing machine."

The most recent one was written by Erwin: "Incredibly skilled soldier, but follows orders to a fault. Shows few signs of independent thought in the field and displays no instinct for self-preservation. Would die if ordered to do so. Requires an impeccable leader."

So that was why Erwin was so anxious to place her and keep her in his squad, Levi thought. He supposed he could take that as a compliment. Levi leaned back in his chair, hands behind his head. He almost wished he hadn't read the file. It didn't make anything clearer. Why would a soldier with such a strong reputation of precision, accuracy, and obedience suddenly behave differently under his command? He could only think of one explanation: She was fucking with him.

There was a knock at his office door and Jean entered, interrupting his thoughts. "What is it?"

"The doctors said that I'm okay to start training again."

The boy had been up and about for a few days now, but the Survey Corps doctors were playing it safe with him. Levi thought the medical officers were probably some of the only members of the Survey Corps that ever displayed any sense of caution. "If they say so, fine."

Jean made a quick salute and turned around to leave. "You know, I blame you for the head injury more than Raban," Levi said to his back. Jean shot him a confused look over his shoulder, so Levi clarified, "You were overconfident and careless. You'll never be promoted to team leader if you run headlong into lethal things." Jean nodded that he understood and looked at least a little ashamed and thoughtful. "Since you're here, I have an errand for you," Levi went on, "Find Raban and tell her to come to my office."

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Jean found Erna in the dining hall, eating dinner with the rest of the team, which she had been doing since she started training with them about two and a half weeks ago. He didn't hold a grudge against her about the sparring session. He had already known it was his own dumb fault without Levi telling him. He had also resolved to stop hitting on her when he had woken up in the infirmary. Even though she was pretty, Jean decided he would rather date a girl who couldn't knock him out in a fight.

Still no one on the team knew what to make of Erna even though they were spending more and more time together. She wasn't friendly, but she wasn't unfriendly. She would socialize with them politely if they asked her impersonal questions, but otherwise she was silent and stoic. Things they had learned about her so far included the name of her horse (Raven), her birthdate (Nov. 12th), and her height (154cm). These were all facts. What they couldn't learn were her opinions or feelings on things because she didn't seem to have any. For example, when asked what her favorite color was she would look puzzled, as if she didn't understand the question or the concept of favorites.

At first her behavior and demeanor seemed unpredictable, but by now everyone had noticed very clear habits and patterns that she stuck to. For example, every time that the team had an unexpected break from training everyone but Erna would be relieved to have the free time. Erna seemed at a complete loss as to what to do with free time and would become anxious and irritable if she couldn't go find more work to do. She stuck to a strict routine: Sleep, black coffee at breakfast, training, dinner, and sleep again. If the team was allowed to stop training well before 6pm, Erna would disappear and meet up with them again at dinner. Once or twice Sasha and Connie had tried to follow her to see where she disappeared to, but they quickly lost track of her and gave up after Mikasa admonished them to let the girl have this one secret since aside from that they could set their watches by her and always knew where she would be. Erna had a reputation among the Survey Corps as being a mystery, but her teammates knew that wasn't really the case. She was obviously very strange, but if you spent some time with her you quickly found that nothing she did was at all unpredictable. In that way she was easy, her mood fluctuated only very little. If Levi gave into Hange and let her borrow Erna for the day, she would show up at dinner in a slightly more morose mood than her normal baseline and if Levi found a reason to make her run laps or do push-ups, she would show up at dinner in a more cheerful mood. When she was in one of her more cheerful moods they could even joke with her and make her laugh at dinner. It was a running inside joke among them that Erna was so protective of her past and so strange because she had been raised by very intelligent, very ruthless wolves. Erna would respond to this accusation by crinkling her nose and baring her teeth like a snarling wolf. One morning at breakfast, Krista commented that she looked tired and Erna responded that it was because she had woken up to howl at the moon in the middle of the night and smiled slyly behind her coffee. None of them were close to Erna, but they were all becoming fond enough of her.

Jean sat down next to Erna, "Hey, Levi wants to see you in his office." Had he delivered that message to anyone else it would have made them cringe, but Erna smiled. She rose from the table without finishing her food and walked away with a bright look in her eyes and a hop in her step.

Someone would have remarked that she was crazy, but they were so used to her particular brand of crazy now that it was almost seen as normal.

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Erna had never skipped before and wasn't sure she knew how, but she felt like skipping down the corridor to Levi's office. Her latest attempt to provoke him into punishing her was to neglect to polish her boots before training, but he hadn't seemed to notice and she was utterly disappointed. She didn't think much about why, but for some reason she only felt happy when Levi was cruel to her. So over the past few weeks she had made herself an expert in eliciting the reactions she wanted from him. Although she failed so far to make him lose his temper the way he had the night that he split her lip, she was always watching for the opportunity. She hoped that an office visit was an indication that he was particularly incensed over something she did. She reached the door, composed herself consciously erasing her smile, knocked twice and entered.

Levi was sitting at his desk and still going through the Erna Raban file. He heard the girl enter, but didn't look up from the file until she had been standing at the center of the floor in front of his desk for at least a minute or two. He enjoyed making her wait in silent anticipation and wanted to draw it out since this would be the last time he would have the opportunity. He closed the file and stood up, walking around the desk to stand in front of her. She followed him with her eyes, but otherwise stood perfectly still at attention, hands folded behind her back. He stared at her in silence for a few more seconds, and then said "I'm putting in the paperwork to transfer you to Captain Zoe's squad since you spend more time being reprimanded than being useful here. It isn't officially completed, but you can report to her tomorrow morning." What he had expected was that Erna would salute, give him her usual "Hai, Captain Levi," turn on her heel, and leave his office. What she did instead was fall to her knees, hug his legs tightly, and begin sobbing. He was shocked.

As soon as the first sentence left Levi's mouth, Erna's heart stopped and she felt like she was falling. The second sentence didn't even register. For the first time in about a dozen years she felt hot tears forming in her eyes. She felt like she couldn't breathe and she fell to her knees. She lost all sense of herself until Levi put his hands on her shoulders and told her to stop crying before she got his uniform wet. She let go of him and leaned back on her knees, wiping the tears from her eyes, she struggled to collect her thoughts and put them into words.

Levi handed her a handkerchief, saying "Explain yourself."

Erna took a few deep breaths and stopped her tears. "Please don't send me away from you. Everything I've been doing to make you punish me has been intentional because… I don't know why, but… I want you to be cruel to me, but I'll stop provoking you, please just don't transfer me. I can't serve under anyone else now. If you send me away I'll lose what's become my reason to live and I'll be reckless and endanger my life and probably the lives of others. I know it doesn't make sense… but I've never really felt anything before now… You make me feel things." She looked down at the floor. She was out of words and wholly convinced that he would transfer her now anyway because she was just too strange to be bothered with.

Levi paused, and then he asked, "What do I make you feel?"

Erna looked up at Levi, hesitating. "I think… love? I think this is what love is for me." She was afraid to tell him the truth but if he was going to send her away, nothing mattered anymore.

"You think…" Levi's voice was calm, expressionless, "Go and run laps until you know."

Erna stood up, shaken and confused, but she saluted, "H- Hai Captain Levi," and she left.

Levi turned around and picked up the file from his desk. "Well that makes a lot of sense," he was pleased. The truth was that his request to transfer her was less about loss of productivity and much more because he actually enjoyed persecuting the girl and it had begun to make him feel like a monster. Still, he thought he had better proceed carefully from here. He knew he had as much time as he wanted to come up with a plan. Erna would run laps until he went and told her to stop.

Levi found Hange in her office, scribbling away. She was completely absorbed and didn't notice him. He tapped his fist on her desk and startled her. She broke the tip of her pencil and exclaimed, "Ah, Levi. Geez, you scared me!"

Levi asked, "Do you have any books on abnormal psychology?"

Hange stood up from her chair and went over to her eight floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, "Hmmmm… You know, I'm really more of an anatomy and anthropology kind of girl, but let me see." She ran her finger over some bindings and got excited, "It won't take a minute, everything is so easy to find since you've been lending me Erna! Did Erwin approve her transfer to my squad?!"

"Not exactly. I might be keeping her. You'll have to learn to keep yourself organized."

"That's a disappointment." She knelt down and pulled a book from the third shelf, "Here you go! An encyclopedia of psychology, everything you could want to know should be in here." She blew a layer of dust off of it, "Well, it might be a little old…" She held the book out to him. "What's it for anyway?"

Levi took it and said, "Just some light reading. I'll return it soon," he cringed at how much dust was still on the cover, "and in better condition." He took the book back to his office, first wiping it with a dust rag and then flipping through it until he found a section on masochistic personality disorders.

.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,,..,

Erna was on her 9th lap around the outside of the castle and about to beat a personal record for distance as the sun started to set. She was drenched in sweat and it felt like her lungs were going to give out on her, but confessing her feelings and making herself vulnerable had given her such a rush of adrenaline and anxiety that she didn't think she would ever feel tired or relaxed again no matter how much she ran. Coming around the corner to the front side of the castle, she saw Levi come out and motion for her to stop running and come to him. She walked over to him, unsure if her heart was beating a million beats per minute from the running or from fear.

All Levi said was "Follow me." So Erna did, trying desperately to catch her breath the whole way. She followed him past his office and he opened the door to his apartment next to it. She hesitated for a moment, but then followed him inside. Erna had never seen the inside of a squad leader's apartment before, but everyone knew they were larger and nicer than the single rooms given to lower-ranking soldiers. The room Levi led her into was a sort of formal living room. Of course, it was immaculately neat. He closed the door behind her and said "Take off your boots. Don't touch anything, you're disgusting. You know, you could have stopped running before becoming drenched in sweat."

Erna removed her boots. "I didn't know how much you wanted me to run, so I kept going."

Levi sat on one of the couches, resting his arms over the back and crossing one leg over the other. He sighed in exasperation and looked at the ceiling. "Stupid girl… Someday I'll forget to come get you and you'll die running."

Erna didn't know what to say. Everything that was happening was very confusing. But what Levi just said gave her hope that he had changed his mind about transferring her.

Levi pointed to a closed door behind him. "Go through there, turn right, there's a washroom off of the bedroom. Clean yourself up and come straight to my office."

Erna quickly found the washroom, being very careful not to touch anything until she got there. Everything was white and clean. She wasn't sure if Levi had meant for her to just wash off her face and hands in the sink or to take a real bath. She hated that he wasn't more specific and worried about what she should do until she saw that there was already water in the tub. She put her hand in to test the water and it was hot, so she decided it would be safe to assume that it was there for her. She stripped off her uniform and carefully lowered herself into the tub. She tried to relax her muscles to keep them from cramping, but it was hopeless, there was no relaxing. She took her hair out of its bun, lowered her head under the water, and held her breath as long as she could. When she came up for air, she took some shampoo from the bottle on the edge of the tub and massaged it into her scalp. She found a bar of soap on the other edge of the tub and a loofah sponge. She scrubbed every inch of her skin until it hurt. Erna knew that if Levi had gone to the trouble of drawing a bath for her, he hadn't done it so that she could do a half-assed job of cleaning herself. She tried to be as thorough as possible but also quick because she didn't want to give herself a chance to think, she only wanted to keep moving and find out what would be next.

When she finished, Erna stood and grabbed one of the fluffy white towels from the rack on the wall. As she dried herself and squeezed the excess water from her hair she realized that she didn't know what to do next. She could put her sweaty clothes back on, which seemed to defeat the whole purpose of the bath or… she couldn't think of another option. She felt like this was a trap. Then she saw it: there was a white robe folded and set on the sink. She decided that taking it was equally as likely to be the wrong decision as putting on the sweaty clothes or walking out in only a towel, but at least she would be covered and comfortable. So she left her clothes on the floor and tied the robe around herself.

As Erna walked back out through the bedroom, it was difficult to overcome the temptation to snoop around. She was sure she would never have the chance again. But she felt like somehow Levi would know if she did, so she hurried through and found what she was pretty sure was the door that adjoined the apartment with the office. She took a deep breath and put her hand on the door, but didn't push it open. Something stopped her. Her legs felt weak. She guessed that this was what fear was like. Another deep breath and she opened the door. Levi was at the desk looking at some papers, he didn't look up until she was standing front and center in front of the desk for almost a minute. Silently she wondered why he always made her wait.

Levi put the papers into a folder which he then put in one of the desk drawers. He locked eyes with her before asking, "If I punish you every night, here, after training, will you stop childishly fucking around to get what you want and start being the precise, efficient soldier I was told you would be?" He knew he didn't have to ask, and already knew what her answer would be, but he wanted to see her look flustered. He hadn't seen her eyes widen in surprise since the time that he brought her a roll on her first day of stable duty. Now that she was going to be his, more than ever he wanted to make her feel everything. He wanted to break down her stony façade as often as possible.

"I… Yes," she stammered.

Levi stood up and walked around to the front of the desk to stand in front of her, holding eye contact with her to make her more uncomfortable. "Take off the robe." It was the first order he ever gave her that she hesitated to follow. She didn't protest, but she blushed bright red and looked down at the floor. "Look at me," he said. She looked back up and he leaned in closer and said slowly, "You don't want to find out what happens if I have to do it for you."

Erna shivered. For a second she thought that maybe she did want to find out, but his tone was the coldest and most evil she had ever heard and she believed him, so she untied the robe and shrugged it off. She didn't try to cover herself, she knew she should feel embarrassed at being naked because that's a thing that normal people feel, but she didn't. She was much more humiliated at being so vulnerable and trying to cross her legs and cover herself with her hands would only make her look more vulnerable. She wanted to look as confident as possible, but she couldn't stop blushing and she couldn't hold eye contact with Levi. He was looking at her like… she wasn't sure. She hadn't seen that look before. It wasn't cold anger or exasperation, which were his two expressions she had become used to. She had seen wolves circle wounded prey before. Levi's eyes looked the same as theirs, full of cold bloodlust. It made her want to cover her throat more than anything else. She wanted to close her eyes, but she was able to keep them open as long as she looked at the floor.

Levi could see all of Erna's torment on her face and he was enjoying it. He didn't order her to look at him again. Just for now he wanted to see what she would do if he didn't give her any orders. He circled her slowly. He couldn't get over how delicate she looked for a soldier. Just looking at her without her uniform on you could tell that her bones were small and light, but they had to be strong as steel for her to have survived this long in the Survey Corps without suffering even a broken toe. Most Survey Corps members had scars, bent bones reset badly in the field, signs of how dangerous their work was. Erna's body looked more like that of an unloved porcelain doll – perfectly smooth with no cracks or wear. The only thing to identify her as a soldier was her muscle tone. Her muscles weren't huge, but they were defined, especially in her legs. But, he thought, that could easily be from all of the long distance running as much as from 3DMG use. He watched her breasts rise and fall with her breathing which she was trying to control to appear unafraid. They were small because she was small, but they were proportional to her body, round and perky. The exact same could be said of her backside, which he had plans for. She stood with her legs closed tightly, the same as when she stood at attention, so he couldn't get a detailed view of her pussy. He could order her to spread her legs, but he knew he had all the time in the world with her so there was no urge to rush and ravage. He stared at her a little longer, knowing there would be a bell curve to her anxiety. If he waited too long, she would start to steadily feel less afraid and more comfortable and he didn't want that.

Levi finally broke the silence, "Bend over," grabbing the back of Erna's neck and pushing her into the desk. "Hands behind your back," the order was less a power move and more a practical consideration. With what he was about to do to her, if he let her lay her hands on the desk he might end up with scratches on the desk top that he didn't want to have to buff out. "Stay."

Erna listened to Levi walk away. She didn't dare turn her head or try to see what he was doing. She tried to control her breathing, calm down, at least decrease the flow of adrenaline a little bit. She was not good at being afraid, she decided. Other people had to deal with fear all of the time. She had been on several scouting expeditions, killed more titans than almost anyone, but she wasn't courageous because she never overcame fear, she just never felt it. She had never really felt or thought so much of anything before coming here. All these feelings Levi brought out in her made her finally feel human and she would never want him to stop, but still it was a lot to take in all at once. She wished there was some sort of way to just dip your toes in the feelings pool and gradually acclimate to becoming human. And she wished she could stop thinking so damn much.

She heard Levi come back. For a second he didn't say anything, and then, "You're going to want to relax or this is going to hurt more than is necessary." Before Erna could process what he said, she heard something cut the air and then felt a sensation like fire across her backside. She bit her lip to keep herself from crying out, almost hard enough to draw blood.

Levi bent the cane, impressed with its strength and elasticity, not to mention its ability to inflict pain. He admired the perfectly straight, red line he had made across Erna's ass. Now that line would be his target. He bent back the tip of the cane and snapped it, hitting exactly where he had before, but harder this time. She didn't move, but she did yelp and he loved it. He wanted to make her make more sounds just like that. He snapped the cane, hitting the red welt and she yelped louder. The fourth time, however, she stood up on her toes at the last second so that he missed his target. Now there were two red lines.

"Clever girl," he said as he pushed her back down, flat on her feet. "But you should know tricks like that are only going to make it worse for you." She was breathing hard. He let her get five deep breaths before hitting her again. This time she couldn't suppress a scream. Levi had to pause, not for her benefit, but he felt his cock getting hard. He didn't want to lose control; if he did he would push her too hard and destroy whatever tenuous trust she had in him. He knew that if he went too far, too fast, she would fear him more than was useful. It would make it hard to get her to follow orders. Levi willed himself to stop letting his body distract him with what it wanted him to do to Erna's naked, vulnerable little body and focus on what needed to be done. He snapped the cane against her glowing red skin again.

With the first few hits, Erna's rapid thinking was slowed down by the distraction of the intense pain. Now, her thoughts had completely melted away. Her mind felt white and peaceful. She no longer thought about when it would stop or how much it hurt, she only looked out the windows behind the desk at the stars and felt bliss. This was the high she had been chasing after since her first punishing night at the castle when Levi had made her run herself into unconsciousness and had to help her back to her room. This was better than that though. Levi hit her again and this time her brain didn't register her nerves' signals as pain. Instead it released a flood of endorphins. This time instead of a scream, she let out a moan. He hit her again and she moaned longer and squirmed against the desk.

Fuck me, Levi thought to himself, who's supposed to be getting punished here? He couldn't ignore the blood rushing to his cock anymore. He ordered her, "Stay," again and left the room.

Erna didn't want to move and didn't feel like she could move even if she did want to. She still couldn't think coherent thoughts. She never wanted this feeling to go away, but as minutes passed the adrenaline and endorphins slowly waned and the pain started to feel like pain again. Slowly her mind slipped out of ecstasy and started to form thoughts again, but those thoughts only took the form of "Ouch… ouch… ouch… ouch…" as her skin throbbed with both the dull blunt pain of bruises beginning to form and stinging fiery pain left on her skin from the snaps of the cane at the same time. When she heard the door separating the office from the apartment open, she turned her head. Levi didn't have the cane. She didn't know if she felt relieved or disappointed. She supposed it was possible to feel both at once.

Levi could see that Erna hadn't moved an inch from where he left her, and he would have praised her except he didn't think that praise was something she needed. Not yet. "Stand up," was all he said. She stood carefully and turned to face him. She could look at his eyes now instead of at the floor. He walked over and handed her a neatly folded white button-down shirt and pair of boxers. "You can wear these back to your room. I'll probably burn the clothes you were wearing before."

She put the shirt on first, taking time to button all but the top buttons. Then she started to slowly slide on the boxers. He could see her thinking; it was cute. She made a very concerted effort to get them over her ass without touching her skin, but failed and winced. She was so much more expressive now than what he had grown used to. He felt almost like he could see her thoughts on her face. She held out her arms, looked at herself, and said, "You know, leaving here in these is probably about as conspicuous as leaving here naked."

She had a good point, except, "It's late, so you shouldn't run into anyone. And, like I said, I'm burning your clothes, so those will have to do." She frowned, but seemed satisfied with his logic. She looked unsure of what to do, so he said, "You're dismissed."

Erna looked to the door, and then back to him, she almost shifted her weight to turn and leave, but instead she flew to him and threw her arms around him in a tight hug, resting her forehead against his chest she whispered, "Thank you." Her long black hair was still damp and she smelled clean, he couldn't take it. He wanted to throw her onto the desk and do everything to her. He wanted to make her scream again and again. He put his hands on her shoulders and pushed her away, holding her at arm's length and looking into her eyes he said, "Training tomorrow as usual. No more mistakes."

She blushed for a moment, but quickly regained her composure, saluted and said, "Hai, Captain Levi." As soon as she left and the door was closed behind her, Levi let out an exasperated sigh, completely frustrated.

Walking back to her room, Erna felt the cold stone against her feet and remembered she had left her boots in Levi's apartment. She didn't think it would be wise to go back. She had another pair, but she knew they were scuffed and dirty and would take a lot of polishing to meet Levi's standards. She groaned, defeated. When she reached her room, she got the boots, polish, and rags, and tried to figure if there was a way to polish boots standing up. She decided against trying. It would be awkward and she would risk getting boot polish on Levi's shirt, which she was pretty sure was an offense punishable by death. So she tossed a pillow on the floor and very slowly lowered herself onto it. It felt like fire. She whimpered and tried to adjust her weight to get more comfortable, but everything she did only made it worse. She contemplated just leaving the scuffed boots as they were, but she had promised no more mistakes. She lifted the collar of the shirt up over her nose and inhaled. It smelled like Levi and it was comforting.


	6. Two-Pointing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The chapter wherein I get everyone drunk and try to keep them in character at the same time. There's some action-y stuff. We finally learn Erna's back story, which I tried to write in the style of an Edward Gorey story - devastatingly depressing, but also dry. There is a reference to "Cool Hand Luke." There's also a quote from "Mary Poppins." There's some graphic sexual content. Basically, everything. There's everything.

The next morning Erna stood at breakfast instead of sitting.

"Erna, why don't you sit down?" Krista asked her, sounding concerned.

Erna lowered her coffee mug from her lips and smiled, "Don't look so worried. I just don't see the point in sitting since I never eat breakfast. It's easy enough to drink coffee standing."

"I see. You're always so practical," Krista said, relieved.

"Not eating breakfast isn't practical, it's insane," Sasha replied.

"Coffee is kind of like breakfast," Erna teased Sasha.

"Coffee isn't food, no matter how much milk and sugar you put in it!" Sasha shouted, standing up from her chair.

Erna calmly sipped her black coffee and raised an eyebrow at Sasha. "But we don't have any sugar."

This reminder deflated Sasha. She sunk back into her chair and laid her head on the table, sighing dramatically, "We haven't had any sugar in weeks. It's so depressing."

Connie observed, "Erna, you must be in a good mood if you're teasing Sasha. Did you have to run laps last night?"

Erna finished her coffee and smiled, "Ah, yeah, I almost made it 16 miles before Levi stopped me."

Connie whistled and then joked, "Soon you'll be able to go on expeditions without your horse."

Eren chimed in, "Don't worry, Erna, if they take your horse away, Horse-face can stand in as your horse," gesturing towards Jean.

Jean scowled at Eren. "I hate you."

Erna clicked her tongue. "So moody. I like my horse better."

Levi appeared seemingly out of nowhere, half-startling all of them. "Speaking of which," he said, "go get your horses. We're not training today. There's a supply team coming from Wall Rose. I volunteered you to ride out to meet them and make sure they reach our headquarters safely."

Sasha perked up, "Maybe they have sugar!"

Everyone left to see if they could catch their horses in the stable before they were let out to graze. Erna placed her mug on the table about to go follow them. "Standing at breakfast?" Levi asked her.

"I… um… yeah." She didn't want to give him the satisfaction of knowing that she was still feeling the painful welts he left on her ass, but she couldn't think of an explanation that would convince him otherwise.

"How do you think you'll do in the saddle?" Levi asked. She knew he was teasing her, but no one ever would have guessed. His tone was the usual deadpan.

"I'll be fine," was what she said, but "Oh fuck you," was what her tone meant. She walked away to go get her horse.

Once outside, Erna started running to catch up with everyone. She went to the first stable where their tack was kept and grabbed her saddle & bridle. She didn't bother going to her horse's stall, she knew they would already be outside. She went out the back of the stable and walked over a hill to where the horses were put out to graze every day. The Scout Corps didn't bother with building fences to pasture their horses. Instead they were let out each morning to graze in a large herd. They were bred for their calm temperament, so it was unlikely that they would spook and stampede and need to be caught again. Each night, they came back to the stables on their own.

Only Krista, Mikasa, and Armin had already caught and saddled their horses. Everyone else was annoyed that they hadn't reached the stable managers in time to warn them not to let their horses out. Some of the horses could be stubborn and slow to come when called. They hadn't bred that trait out yet. Erna stood next to Connie and put her saddle on the ground. Connie took a break from whistling. He turned to Erna and pointed at a bay gelding at the edge of the herd and said, "Look at the lazy ass. He always does this." He shouted at the horse, "Oi, Berto! Time to get to work, you stubborn mule!" Erna brought two fingers to her mouth and made a single long, high-pitched whistle. She stood and waited. After a few seconds Connie laughed, "Your horse must be as lazy as mine." Erna didn't respond. Connie heard the sound of galloping hooves and turned in the direction the sound came from. To their left, coming around from the back edge of the herd at a dead run was a large black horse with a white stripe going from its forehead to its nose. It closed the distance between them quickly and showed no sign of even thinking about slowing down. Connie backed away from Erna, who stood perfectly still. The horse was only about twenty strides away and looked intent on running them down. Connie turned to run, but tripped and landed on the ground, hands covering his head, thinking the horse was going to trample over both of them, but at the last second it locked its legs and slid to a stop in front of Erna who didn't even flinch. The horse pushed its head against Erna's abdomen, nuzzling her. Krista rode over and gushed, "Awww, Erna! Your horse loves you!" Connie got up and dusted himself off. He gave Erna an irritated look and said, "You could have warned me."

Erna picked up her saddle and looked at Krista, saying "Don't let her fool you. She's the meanest, most evil mare I've ever met." The horse tried to nuzzle her again and she pushed its nose away. "I didn't think I needed to warn you to run from a charging horse, Connie."

"I meant you could have warned me to not run like an idiot if she's not dangerous. I thought she was going to stomp me to death!"

Erna put her saddle on and cinched the girth. "I didn't know that she wouldn't." The horse lowered its head and let her put on the bridle. Erna put the reins over the horse's head and turned to Connie. "Can you give me a leg up?"

Connie was surprised. "You can't get on from the ground?"

Erna sighed, "Do I look tall enough to get up there?"

They all forgot sometimes how short Erna was. As he walked over, he asked, "Why would you even pick a horse that's too tall for you?"

"I don't know…" Erna thought about it and looked nostalgic, "When I was among the new recruits picking out horses, I was in the middle of the herd, wondering how anyone could be drawn to one horse in particular since they're all just horses –"

"Yeah, that sounds like you." Connie interrupted.

Erna gave him an annoyed look and continued, "Anyway, Raven trotted up to me and quick as a flash turned around to kick me. I turned around and started to run just barely in time and she kicked me square in the back. If I had been closer and still facing her, I think she would have kicked me in the chest and killed me. So I chose her."

"You are the weirdest…" Connie knelt down and cupped his hands and said "On three." Erna placed her left foot in his hands and he counted, "One… two… three." She jumped and he boosted her too hard so she almost went flying completely up and over the saddle. He grabbed her leg and pulled her back. "Oops!"

"Aish, Connie! How heavy do you think I am!?" Erna put her feet in the stirrups and picked up her reins. Connie just shrugged and smiled. Krista said, "You should hurry, I think we're all almost ready."

"Oh shit." Connie whistled for his horse and shouted at it again, "Stop ignoring me, you dumb mule!"

Erna started to ride off to join the others who were ready, but then stopped her horse, turned, and galloped to Connie's horse. She took off her belt and leaned over to tie it around the grazing horse's neck. She gave Berto a gentle tug and he followed her and Raven back to Connie.

"Thanks." Connie removed the belt and gave it back to Erna.

Erna shrugged, "Anything to get us all moving faster." She put her belt back on and rode out to the front of the castle where they would all meet. Levi was there when she reached them, standing on the ground next to his horse, waiting.

As Erna rode up, Levi could see that she was standing in her stirrups just slightly, keeping herself only about half an inch out of the saddle. He left his horse and walked over to her, stopping her at a short distance away from the rest of the squad. "Your file says that you show little sign of independent thought when out on missions. I'm only going to give you one directive: Only engage with titans if it will save a life and don't save any lives at the expense of your own." Erna nodded that she understood. "Take your feet out of your stirrups." Erna's shoulders slumped in disappointment. She did as he said, but tightened her thighs around the saddle to hold herself up without the support of the stirrups. "I'm taking these," he said as he removed the stirrups from her saddle.

Connie and Krista rode up and Levi mounted his horse. They rode out over the drawbridge along with two other squads. There were no speeches made about how this all worked or what was expected of them, most of them had been through it before. The Quartermaster Corps sent a small group with wagons of cargo outside the walls, the Wall Garrison sent three squads to flank and protect the wagons for the first three miles outside of the wall and the Survey Corps squads rode to meet them and guard the wagons the rest of the way to headquarters. There and back they would ride twenty miles give or take a few. Erna was able to hold herself up out of the saddle without her stirrups for the first six miles before her inner thigh muscles couldn't take it anymore. She cursed her decision to even try to stay out of the saddle without her stirrups. If she had thought it through she would have seen that it was impractical. Now, not only would her ass be sore, which it would have been anyway, but also her thigh muscles would be tight and burning by tomorrow. "Ouch, ouch, ouch, so stupid," she whispered to herself through her clenched teeth.

They rode fast. The route that they and the wagons took between the wall and headquarters was open grassland, devoid of forests or abandoned villages which was fairly nerve-racking. It made it easy to spot titans from a distance, but difficult to fight them with the 3DMG. The strategy was to go fast and avoid engaging titans if they were encountered. When they spotted the Quartermaster Corps, they closed in to flank them – a squad on each side and in front – and the Wall Garrison squads fell away. The change was made seamlessly without anyone slowing down.

Erna rode positioned on the outer wing of her squad's v-like formation on the eastern side of the wagons. No one tried to speak as they rode. The mood was tense, but after making it about half of the distance back to headquarters without an incident Erna thought maybe this was going to be an uneventful mission, which would be nice for a change. This line of thinking didn't last long. They heard the sound of a titan running at them, coming up on the western side of the formation. It was unnecessary to send up a flare. They could all see the 10m tall titan and they all simply rode faster. Erna watched the riders and wagons on the opposite side as they sped up and pulled away. The titan continued running after them but fell further and further behind. Everyone else was facing forward, watching out in front of them, but Erna could never turn her back on a titan as long as it was in sight. That is why she was the first to see when one of the wagons went over a deep divot in the ground and its driver was bounced from her seat. She flew through the air, but the horses pulling the wagon ran on, staying in their formation, so no one noticed. Erna called out to the others, "I'm going!" and spun Raven around to try and reach the woman before the titan could. The woman had the wind knocked out of her when she fell and was trying to get her breath back to scream, but before she could the titan was on her.

Levi ordered the rest of the squad to stay in formation and keep moving. He slowed his horse, falling back to the rear, but not changing direction to go help Erna. He had to have confidence in her and trust that she would heed his order to not save a life at the expense of her own. Still, he watched her to be sure. She was too far to reach the quartermaster soldier before the titan. She was still too far even to deploy her 3DMG by the time the titan picked up the woman, bringing her to its hideous mouth. Levi thought it would be too late. He was about to call Erna back, but before he could she brought her feet up, crouching balanced on her horse's back as it continued to run, she stood up and unsheathed her blades and was gone. Levi watched as she flitted through the air like a dragonfly.

Erna was annoyed that she hadn't been able to grab the woman before the titan and made a note to herself that Raven should start being forced to run laps around the castle instead of her. By the time she was close enough to reach the titan with her steel cables it was already bringing the screaming soldier into its mouth. There was no time to hamstring it and bring it to the ground before killing it. Erna's cables sunk into the monster's shoulder, she reeled herself in, released the cables, and cut the nape of its neck before it could eat the quartermaster soldier. There was only a moment before the titan began to fall. Erna shot her cables into the wrist of the hand that still held the other soldier tightly. She landed on its clenched hand and made a clean cut detaching the thumb which fell away, turning to steam. She grabbed the woman at the elbow before she could fall with it and pulled her up to where she stood. The woman stopped screaming and found her footing. Erna let go of her elbow, sheathed her blades, and then grabbed the back of the woman's jacket to help her keep her balance as they fell. She said calmly, "We have to ride this down. Jump before it hits the ground, but not too soon or you'll die on impact. When you do jump be sure to tuck and roll," she waited for the woman to nod that she understood and then brought the fingers of her free hand to her lips and whistled loudly, calling Raven to meet them about where they would land.

Erna kept holding the woman's jacket. She could feel her shaking. She would be in shock after they made it out of this. "Wait," Erna whispered into her ear. When they were about twenty feet from the ground, she gave her a push and said, "Jump," making sure she was clear before jumping herself and tucking her arms and legs. Erna landed a little behind the woman and got up running, picking the woman up by the hand and pulling her behind. Raven slowed to a stop in front of them and went down on her knees. Erna pushed the woman ahead of her. "Get on; we're light enough to ride double." The woman swung her leg over the saddle and Erna got on in front of her, tapping Raven with her heels when she was ready for her to get up.

As they took off at a breakneck gallop to catch up to the rest of the formation, Erna turned around and said, "I would apologize for not reaching you before the titan, but I blame Raven for that." She leaned down and patted the horse's neck, murmuring affectionately, "You're either lazy and out of shape or you're trying to kill me, you evil thing." She turned around again. "In any case, I'm going to drop you back in your wagon. I think if I tried to make her carry both of us all the way back to headquarters she would just buck us off and run." The woman didn't respond. Probably in shock, Erna thought.

They caught up with the formation. The horses pulling the wagon had never slowed down or veered off. Erna steered Raven to run alongside, getting as close as possible. She twisted herself to hold the woman tightly by the upper arm and told her, "Swing your leg over if you can. I won't let you fall." The woman was still shaking, but was able to swing her leg over in front of her and ride side saddle. "On three, jump for the wagon seat," Erna started counting quickly to use the woman's shock to her advantage. She didn't want to give her time to realize how dangerous this could potentially be. Hesitation would make it more dangerous. When she got to three, Erna lifted the woman by her upper arm and threw her as best she could. She fell more than jumped into the wagon seat, but either way, she was there and no longer Erna's responsibility. She slowed down and let the wagon pull away, and steered Raven to go fall back into her squad. They were now four miles away from headquarters. They made it back without any more incidents.

They rode through the drawbridge to the front of the castle where three fresh squads waited with their horses to escort the Quartermaster Corps back to the wall when the supplies were unloaded. The sun was starting to lower, so it would probably be dark by the time they left and they would have less of a chance of running into titans. Erna and the others dismounted and their horses were taken to be cooled down. Erna tried to stretch her legs. They hurt like hell. Someone tapped her shoulder and she turned around. She was surprised to see the woman she had rescued. She had brown hair in a ponytail and brown eyes and she was holding a wooden crate on her hip. She was still pretty shaken, but she stammered, "I, um, didn't thank you before. My name is Ada." She held out the small crate, it contained six bottles of wine and liquor, a highly valued commodity amongst the Survey Corps, since it was delivered to headquarters so rarely. Ada bowed her head saying, "You saved my life. Please take this as a show of my gratitude."

Erna looked at the crate and then at Ada. "You don't have to do that," she said, "Your life is worth more than some booze." The woman frowned, but Sasha appeared out of nowhere, pushing Erna out of the way and grabbing the crate from Ada, shouting, "Don't listen to her! We'll take this on her behalf, thank you so much! Have a safe journey back!" She held the crate over her head and began running to the castle, Connie being the first to chase after her yelling, "Sasha Braus! Don't you dare horde that all for yourself!"

Erna began walking to the castle. She felt like she wanted to lie in bed for at least eighteen hours. A hand took hold of her shoulder and turned her around. It was Levi. He looked into her eyes and asked, "So were you thinking out there?" Erna paused, but then answered honestly, "Not really… Only of what you told me. I calculated that I could save the woman without risking my own life, so I did."

"I see," was all Levi responded with. He looked past her to Sasha running into the castle followed by the rest of his squad. They were still children in some ways. "Go have a drink with your team members."

Erna gave him a tired look, "I just want to go to bed."

"It wasn't a request. Take it as an order. I'll join you guys after I talk to Erwin, so don't think you can get out of it and I won't find out." He turned her around and pushed her towards the castle.

Erna groaned and went to follow everyone else.

The dining hall was full and loud. Receiving a new supply shipment was basically an excuse to have a huge party. Erna put her head on the table and groaned, knowing that even if she could go to bed, it would be too loud to sleep until hours past midnight.

Jean poured himself another glass of wine, asking Erna for the third time, "You're sure you only want water?"

Eren shouted, "Stop trying to get the rookie drunk, Horse-face! It's creepy, even for you!" He took a long swig from a stein of ale.

Erna jumped in before they could really get into it. "It's fine, really. I just like to keep a clear head."

Sasha hiccupped, "That's no fun! You need to relax. Get drunk with us or you'll ruin the mood!"

Armin held up a wine bottle, "Yeah, this is all yours anyway. We'll feel bad taking it if you aren't having any."

Sasha grabbed the bottle from him and said, "Speak for yourself," while filling her glass.

Erna laughed and took a sip from her water. "If you're all drinking then I need to stay sober to save your drunken asses if anything happens."

"Nah, we can all still 3D maneuver while drunk," Connie slurred. He reached for the pitcher of ale in the middle of the table, but missed and almost knocked it over. Sasha saved it and slapped his hand away. Connie corrected himself, "Well, I'm pretty sure Mikasa can anyway."

They all looked to Mikasa whose head was now on Eren's shoulder. She had dozed off. Eren explained, "She's never been able to handle her liquor. She doesn't even stay awake long enough to act drunk." He shook her, but she didn't open her eyes. "Armin, help me carry her." Armin got up and they each put an arm over their shoulders, carrying Mikasa away with her feet dragging.

Sasha clapped her hands, "More for us!" She pointed at Erna with the wine bottle she was holding, "No excuses now. I want to see Drunk Erna!"

Krista leaned over to Erna and said quietly, "She won't leave you alone until you do. Just have a little so she'll stop yelling." Krista had been daintily sipping a small glass of wine and was nowhere near as shitfaced as everyone else.

Erna clenched her fists on the table. "I didn't even want the stupid crate! You took it, not me, so it's yours!"

Levi had been sitting at the other end of the table, silently drinking from a bottle of expensive whiskey and watching all of this. He stood up and everyone at the table shut up. He walked over to Erna, put a glass down in front of her, and when he'd filled it with about three ounces of whiskey he ordered her, "Drink."

"But I –," Erna was about to protest. Levi cut her off, "It's an order."

Erna quickly picked up the glass, gulped it down in one shot, and put it back down on the table. He poured out another three ounces admonishing her, "You're supposed to sip. Don't shoot it." He capped the bottle and went back to his seat at the other end of the table and everyone resumed drunkenly shouting at each other.

Later, Erna's head was spinning and her stomach felt warm. Levi had filled her glass again… once? Or twice? She wasn't sure. She felt silly and really talkative, but she had managed to keep her mouth shut thus far. She was determined not to act drunk because that was what they wanted and she didn't want to give them the satisfaction.

Sasha and Connie finally came to an agreement to disagree after a lengthy argument about whether or not Sasha could eat 100 hard-boiled eggs in an hour if given the opportunity. They would never be able to find out anyway because the kitchen hardly ever had that many eggs on hand at once. Sasha finally turned her attention back to Erna, teasing her, "Ernaaaaaa, your face is so red! Are you drunk, huh? Tell us something about yourself finally!"

Erna was defensive, "I don't not tell you guys stuff!"

Sasha argued, "What have you told us, like ever?"

Erna thought about it and then pointed to Connie, "I told Connie a story about how I chose my horse this morning! So there."

Connie was supporting his head on his fist. "Truth!" he exclaimed. He took another drink and slurred, "But you did make me give you a leg up when apparently your horshe kneelsh down for you to get on."

Erna waved her empty glass, "She doesn't do it all the time. I never know what she's going to do, I'm not some master horse trainer."

"None of that counts anyway! You never tell us anything really personal! We're supposed to be a team! You have to tell us stuff!" Sasha whined.

"I'm not as interesting as you guys make me out to be," Erna tried to deflect, "What about Jean, how much do you know about him?"

"Pfft. Jean's boring. Perfectly normal, except for his face," Sasha replied.

Jean slammed his glass down on the table. "I'm sick of you idiots! I'm going to bed!" He walked out of the dining hall.

Sasha called after him, "Jean, don't be mad, you know we pick on you because we love you!"

Eren called after him too, "Not me! I genuinely dislike you!"

Armin reached over and put his hand on Erna's shoulder, he was a touchy and affectionate drunk. "What about where you're from, Erna? Where's your family?"

Erna shrugged off Armin's hand and said quietly, "They're dead."

Sasha gasped, "Oh no, not your wolf-parents!"

Eren saw Levi raise an eyebrow and leaned over to him, "It's an inside joke."

Levi took another sip of whiskey. "Good. I was worried she'd killed her last brain cell."

Erna's mouth formed a sad smile, "No, my real parents. My whole family, actually."

Krista's eyes welled up with tears, as they usually did when she was drinking... and when she wasn't drinking. She looked like a sad angel. "I'm so sorry. Was it titans?" she asked.

Erna looked down at the table and spoke calmly, "No, it was completely my fault. I was the youngest of five and my family loved me, but they were too poor to afford another child, so when I was 7 they sold me as a servant to a wealthy family in Hermina. They didn't treat me horribly, but I was young and I missed my family, so I escaped and found my way home. Of course that was the first place they looked for me. To make an example of me to the other servants they killed my family and brought me back. I was an effective reminder to the other servants that if they tried to leave, their families would also be killed. After that, I didn't feel angry or sad. I just stopped feeling anything altogether. One day I was in the kitchen and I overheard the cooks talking about how people who starve to death feel euphoria right before they die, so I tried to starve to death, but someone would always force me to eat. I would faint a lot and one time when I was 15, I fainted and I guess my pulse was light enough that they thought I finally died. Rather than explain a dead servant to the military police, they left my body in an alley, so I would just look like any anonymous homeless kid who starved to death. Someone kind found me and revived me and forced me to eat. I kept trying to die, but someone would always find me and feed me or save me from the cold. It was really annoying. Then a wall guard found me and forced me to join the Trainee Corps because they were under the recruitment quota. I got strong quickly and I wanted to help and be useful. Everyone else was so afraid of death because they actually liked their lives. Everyone had things to live for and I felt guilty that I would probably live longer than them when I didn't even get half the enjoyment out of being alive that they did. The Trainee Corps made me see that life was only wasted on me and that if I was going to justify my being alive while so many died, I needed to use my life to save as many others from dying as possible. So when I graduated I joined the Survey Corps, and then they put me here." She sighed and folded her arms on the table, resting her head on them. "It's all really very boring."

Everyone was silent. Tears ran in a steady stream down Krista's cheeks.

Levi got up and walked over to Erna, "Okay, let's get you to bed." He took one of her arms to pull her up and she whined, "I've never been drunk before, I don't even understand how you walk like this." So Levi pulled her hands over his shoulders. She wrapped her arms around his neck and he hooked his arms around her legs to carry her piggyback so that he could also carry the half-empty bottle of whiskey in one hand. He told the rest of them, "I probably don't need to tell you this, but you all have the day off from training tomorrow." He walked out with Erna on his back.

Connie punched Sasha in the arm, "Nice one, Sasha!"

Sasha shouted "Ow! How is this my fault!? Armin is the one who asked! Why don't you hit him?"

"Nah, you're more fun to pick on," Connie responded.

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Levi made his way through the corridors, filled with soldiers in various states of drunkenness, stumbling, singing, fighting, and flirting. "This place is going to be such a mess in the morning…"

Erna waved her feet and murmured in his ear, "I need my stirrups back. Can't ride without them anymore."

Levi kicked open the door to his office. He closed the door behind them and set Erna down to stand in front of the desk. He opened the bottle in his hand, drained half of what was left, and set it down on the desk saying, "Well that was depressing. You're just a little bundle of survivor's guilt, aren't you?"

"I don't know what you're talking about." Erna took off her jacket and dropped it. "So hot!"

Levi wondered, "Do you remember the last five minutes?"

"Nope." Erna struggled with the buckles of her 3DMG harness.

"Do you remember being in the dining hall?"

Erna groaned, frustrated, "No. Why do I have to remember things?" She finally got her harness undone and took it off along with her boots, "So much better."

So she's blackout drunk, Levi thought. How many shots did he give her? Six or eight? Oh well. He decided to test out how confessional she was feeling. "Erna, look at me."

"Hai, Captain Levi!" she saluted and smiled.

"Have you ever had any friends?" Levi asked as a litmus test.

"I've been friendly with people, but no, I haven't had what a normal person would call a friend." She answered with blunt honesty.

"No boyfriends?"

"Wouldn't I have to have friends first?" Erna answered with a question, but when Levi scowled at her, she realized he was looking for more of a yes or no, "No, Captain Levi."

"So you've never been with a man?" He asked.

"No." She answered simply.

"Never seen a man naked?"

"I've seen lots of people naked. The trainee corps is kind of a naked-fest whenever people remember that they could die any day. There's a lot of skinny dipping and a lot of sex. I was just never interested."

So Levi didn't need to ask if she was a virgin. "Have you ever touched yourself?" This question finally made Erna's face turn even redder than it had been since she started drinking. She looked at the floor. "Answer me."

"Not until I came here." Erna added, "Not until I met you."

"What do you think about?" Levi leaned in closer to her.

Erna paused for a long moment. "Nothing," she lied.

That's as good an answer as any, he thought. "You know I have to punish you for lying."

"Are you going to cane me again?" She sounded worried, but maybe also a little excited.

"No, nothing that fun." Levi answered her as he unbuttoned her pants and pulled them down, cupping her ass and lifting her onto the desk.

"Ow, ow, ow," she winced when her ass hit the desk. Levi's lips formed a wry smile. He pulled her pants all the way off and let them fall to the floor. He pushed her legs apart. She was wearing white cotton panties, of course, perfectly practical in every way. Levi stood between her legs and lightly stroked the fabric and made her shiver. He rubbed her harder and she wrapped her legs around him. She clenched the edge of the desk on either side of her tightly in her hands. He could feel the fabric of her panties slowly getting wet as she pushed her face into his shirt, muffling her moans. With his free hand, Levi reached behind her, grabbed the whiskey bottle, and took another drink while she bucked her hips, trying to grind harder against his teasing fingers. He set the bottle down again and whispered in her ear, "Tell me how you make yourself come." Her breathing was ragged. She got out between gasps and moans, "I… can't…" He stopped rubbing her and she whimpered. He gave her an evil smile and slid his hand down inside her panties and parted her lips, finding her opening and sliding a finger in. She gasped and tightened around him, almost drawing him into her. He drew his finger partially out and she tightened her legs around him, only relaxing when he slid it all the way back in.

Erna had only ever rubbed her clit when she touched herself, so the feeling of having a finger inside her was totally new. She was completely lost in the feeling, unaware of what she was doing. She didn't realize her hands had left the desk and were now grabbing fistfuls of Levi's shirt to pull him closer until he told her, "If you wrinkle it, I'm going to stop." She immediately let go and put her hands back on the desk, leaning back a little and trying to spread her legs further for him. "Good girl," he lightly rubbed her clit with his thumb as he kept pumping his middle finger in and out of her. Erna felt her mind going blank again. It was like every anxiety and every bad feeling was flooding out of her brain leaving only white space. She didn't even hear the click of the door handle.

Levi withdrew his fingers and turned around to see Eren frozen in shock, hand still on the door. "Step in here and close the door, you idiot," he said calmly. Erna opened her eyes, yelped, and closed her legs, blushing like mad. Eren still stood frozen, eyes wide and mouth open. Levi wasted no time. The best way to keep someone quiet about your indiscretions was to make them complicit in them. He walked past Eren and locked the door so no one else would enter without knocking. He took Eren by the arm and pulled him over in front of the desk, pushing him down to his knees in front of the wide-eyed Erna whom he pulled off of the desk. He turned her around, bent her over the desk, and ripped her panties off. She couldn't help squirming, trying to get up. He pinned her hands behind her back and pressed down. "Don't struggle." She stopped and held still. Now, Levi addressed Eren, who was staring, completely dumbfounded, "I want you to try to make her come."

Eren thought maybe he had drunk too much and passed out and this was a horrible, wonderful dream. "… What?"

Levi kicked Erna's feet apart. "I. Want. You. To try. To make. Her. Come," he said more slowly. "I don't care how, just don't fuck her. I'm not in that much of a sharing mood."

Eren didn't know what to do. This felt like a trap. He was too drunk and too confused and totally shocked. It wasn't like he hadn't thought about what it would be like to be with Erna, every guy thought about fucking every girl on the squad at some point or another. He knew because they all talked about it. This was not at all like any one of the scenarios in which he imagined hooking up with her, but he stared at her perfect, wet pussy and he decided, trap or no, this was too good an opportunity.

"If I have to say it again, I'm going to rescind my offer and throw you out the window," Levi broke Eren's reverie. He sounded completely serious. Eren thought it was lucky that he actually wanted to do what Levi was asking because it sounded like he didn't have a choice either way. He just didn't know how to start, he was thinking too much until Levi snapped him out of his thinking with his cold voice, "Now."

Eren leaned forward and gave Erna a slow, tentative lick from her clit up to her wet opening. She flinched at the touch of his tongue and gasped. Levi rolled his eyes, thinking "Finally," and sat down in his desk chair. He watched Erna's face. She closed her eyes and bit her lip, she wouldn't let herself moan. Levi downed more of the whiskey. If he drank enough, he wouldn't be able to get hard and he wouldn't be able to take advantage of the girl. He didn't want her first time to be a clumsy, drunk mess that he would regret and she wouldn't remember. He could see Eren was relaxing and getting into it without someone standing over him, but Erna remained determined not to make a sound. Levi snapped his fingers in front of her face, she opened her eyes. He leaned forward in his chair and told her quietly, "I order you to relax and let yourself enjoy this." Erna quit biting her lip and seemed to relax her muscles a little. She still looked conflicted over whether or not she should moan for anyone but him. He pressed his middle finger to her lips, telling her "Taste yourself." She opened her mouth and sucked his finger much more eagerly than he was expecting. He felt his cock start to get hard and he took his finger back out of her mouth and quickly grabbed the whiskey bottle and drank all that was left.

Erna's breathing came in gasps. Eren plunged his tongue deep into her and she couldn't stop herself from moaning anymore. She looked away from Levi and pressed her forehead into the cool desk. Her moans excited and encouraged Eren and he grabbed her ass with both hands as he alternated swirling his tongue around her clit and pushing his tongue into her, trying to fuck her with his tongue as best he could. She let out a short scream as his hands on her ass made pain and heat radiate through her body. She lost control and moved her hips to try to deepen the thrusts of his tongue. He grabbed her ass harder, unaware that it hurt like hell. She gasped into the desk, "I can't… I'm…" and suddenly it all stopped. She lifted her head and opened her eyes. Levi was no longer in his desk chair. She looked behind her and he was pulling Eren up by the back of his neck. "That's enough," he said, "I said I wanted you to try to make her come, not succeed."

Erna groaned. Levi grabbed her elbow and pulled her up from the desk. He took her pants from the floor and handed them to her. She reluctantly put them on along with her boots and she picked up her discarded 3DMG harness. Levi looked at Eren and said, "Take her back to her room. Obviously, don't tell anyone about this." He paused, then added, "And don't touch her. If you do, I'll find out and I'll kill you." Eren believed that the threat wasn't an exaggeration. Levi looked at Erna. "And you don't touch yourself." Erna blushed. Levi waved them away saying, "You can go," as he turned around, "I have to clean my desk."

Eren walked Erna back through the corridors to her room in what he thought was probably the most awkward silence that ever existed in human history. Just to make it extra awkward, he had a raging hard-on. But Erna didn't seem to notice and neither did anyone else they passed in the corridors. Everyone was too drunk by now to notice anything. When they got to her room, Erna opened the door, turned to him and said, "Good night." What he wanted to respond with was, "What the fuck just happened!?" but what came out was "Um…" Erna sighed at him and said, "Look, we probably won't remember this. And if we do, let's just pretend that we don't." Eren was perplexed by the whole situation and how she could be so composed, but he managed to get out, "Oh… yeah… that's easy enough," which was a lie. "Well… I'll see ya." Internally he face-palmed, thinking "So smooth… I'm an idiot." He decided to just walk away before he could say anything else. Before he got far, Erna asked him, "Hey Eren, what did you go to Levi's office for anyway?" Eren turned around to answer, "You know what? Truthfully, I can't remember." Erna yawned, "Oh well," and she closed her door.

On the walk back to his room, Eren kept thinking of things that he desperately wanted to do now but then he would remember that Levi would kill him. "I should tell Jean that I hooked up with Erna… He'll be so pissed… Oh wait, no, the death thing… Fuck." He got to his room; his hard-on still hadn't gone away. He started undressing and tried to remember what Levi had said and make a mental checklist, "Don't tell anyone – check. Take her back to her room – check. Don't touch her – check, unfortunately." He got into bed and thought, "He only told Erna she couldn't touch herself… right? I hope I'm remembering that right."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really try to end chapters on something cute or funny. Despite my love of S&M, I am not an angst-y person and I don't like for things to be uber-dramatic.


	7. Rhetorical Questions

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Not so much smut here. More friendship. Super sweet.

Erna bolted upright in bed. It was late. She was late for training. There weren't any windows in her room, but she could feel it. Her head pounded like someone had taken a hammer to her forebrain. She wondered what the fuck happened last night as she jumped out of bed and got dressed. Was she poisoned? It felt like she was poisoned. Would that be an okay excuse for being late? She splashed some cold water on her face and ran out the door still pulling her boot on. Everything was much quieter than usual. She turned a corner and saw two people lying seemingly dead in the corridor. She ran over and checked one of them for a pulse. The food they got in the supply shipment the night before had to have been poisoned, that was the most logical conclusion. She found a pulse and was relieved. She was about to check the other man, but he was snoring, so… no. She stood up and tried hard to remember anything. She was interrupted by Mikasa's voice, "What are you doing in uniform?"

Erna turned around. Mikasa was wearing a white long-sleeve tee and black leggings and, of course, her scarf. "What are you doing out of uniform?" Erna responded.

Mikasa smiled. "The squads that escort supply runs always get the next day off."

Erna tried to process this, "So no training?"

"No training." Mikasa smirked at Erna's confusion, "Did you fall asleep as early as I did?"

"I don't know. The last thing I can remember is returning from the mission," Erna said, clearly distressed.

Mikasa tried to comfort her, "I think you're experiencing a blackout. Don't worry, things get pretty crazy when we get a supply shipment in. You're definitely not the only one whose memories are fuzzy."

"So I was drunk? That would explain why my head feels like a donkey kicked it?" Erna asked.

"Yes." Though Mikasa hadn't been there to see Erna drinking, she was sure that was a safe bet.

"I'm glad you were here. I thought we were all poisoned."

Mikasa nodded at the sleeping people in the corridor, "I can see how you would think that. Come on, I was going to get breakfast."

Mikasa and Erna had to fend for themselves in the kitchen. Erna put water on for coffee and Mikasa handed her a roll, "I know you don't eat breakfast, but if you don't eat anything and just drink coffee your stomach is going to hurt worse than your head." Erna took the roll and responded, "Thanks. I've never been hung over. Actually, I've never been drunk. I wish I could remember what it was like and if it was worth the hangover."

"Your memories will probably come back to you eventually. At least you're not alone. No one from our squad is awake yet. They'll probably wake up in the early afternoon in as much or more pain than you're in now."

"You seem fine, did you not drink?"

Mikasa smiled, "No, I don't think anyone's allowed not to drink. I just fall asleep pretty quickly after drinking a little. I never have hangovers, but I have a lot of experience babysitting hung over people," she was referencing her teammates.

Erna finished making the coffee and said, "You take good care of them." She poured it out into two mugs and handed one to Mikasa who nodded and simply said, "They're my friends."

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Erna went to Levi's office and opened the door, walking in without bothering to knock. He was at his desk holding his head and writing something. He didn't look up at her. "Doesn't anyone knock anymore?" Erna closed the door behind her and apologized. Levi looked at her and looked down at his paperwork again, asking "Why are you in uniform?"

Erna sighed, annoyed at having to explain this for like the third time this morning, "I don't have any other clothes. It's not like I can go into town and go shopping." Levi was wearing a dark red button-down shirt and black pants, still pretty formal even when he was being casual. He admonished her, "Keep your voice down. So shrill." He had a splitting headache.

Erna said very quietly, "Sorry."

Levi put down his pen, frustrated, "I can't do this in here." He picked up the papers and went over to the door separating the office from his apartment. "Come on."

Erna followed him to his living room. He tossed the papers onto the coffee table and sat on one of the couches. He leaned back, closed his eyes and massaged his temples, telling Erna, "Sit."

Erna went to sit in one of the big, comfy armchairs, but Levi stopped her, "Not on the furniture." His eyes aren't even open, how does he always know what I'm doing? She wondered to herself. Levi pointed at the floor next to him and Erna went over and got on her knees. He opened his eyes, leaning forward and picking up the papers again. "What are you doing?" Erna asked him.

"Filling out a report about the escort mission," he answered. Erna laid her head in his lap. He stroked her hair absentmindedly while scanning what he had filled out so far. He asked her, "How do you feel?" She yawned, "Not good. I would have gone back to sleep, but everything hurts too much and when I close my eyes I feel like I'm spinning. Mikasa says I'm hung over, but I don't even remember getting drunk."

Levi flipped a page, telling her, "At least you don't have to work."

She sighed, "I hate days off."

Levi tossed the report back on the coffee table again. His eyes were having trouble focusing. "Then you can do this report, it's your fault I have to make one anyway. We only have to fill out reports for escort missions if any titans are killed. Now I have to get this to Erwin before this afternoon." Erna looked at the papers and then back up at him, "I don't know how." Sometimes her innocence killed him. "I know," he said. He leaned back and massaged his temples again. "Go draw me a bath. You should be able to manage that." She got up and quietly tiptoed out of the room and soon he heard the water running. He started his report again and a few minutes later he heard the water stop. He waited; she didn't come back to the living room right away, so he shouted just loudly enough for her to hear in the other room, "Stop snooping through my things." He heard something fall. She hurried into the living room, "It was just… I was… Nothing…" He raised an eyebrow at her and she stamped her foot, "How do you know everything anyway!?" He put the report down on the coffee table again, still unfinished, walking back towards the bedroom and telling her, "You're dismissed."

She whined at him, "Noooo, please. I can't stand days off! Give me something else to do! I'll do anything!" Her high-pitched tone felt like a spike driving into his forehead, he told her, "I can't do this with you right now. I order you to enjoy your day off. Don't bother me again until later tonight."

Erna pouted, "Yes, Sir…" When he walked away, she went over to the door, grabbing her boots she had forgotten two nights ago. They were exactly where she had left them. She tiptoed out and shut the door quietly behind her.

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Around 5pm Mikasa found Erna outside the castle, standing about 20m from the grazing horses. She heard Erna whistle and her horse left the herd and galloped over to her, stopping right in front of her and nickering. Erna took a carrot from her pocket and was breaking it into pieces when Mikasa reached her and said quietly, "Everyone wondered what you did when we weren't training."

Erna held a piece of carrot out to the horse. "You found me," she sounded tired. Mikasa reassured her, "Don't worry, I won't tell anyone."

Erna held out more carrot pieces as they were snatched up and devoured. "How did you figure it out?" she asked without taking her eyes off of Raven.

"When Krista thought your horse was being affectionate yesterday, I saw she was actually just sniffing your pockets."

The carrot was gone and Erna put her hands behind her back. The horse turned to Mikasa, sniffing at her. Mikasa held out her hands to show that she had nothing and was pulled back by Erna just in time to watch a hoof fly past her head. After kicking at her, Raven ran back to rejoin the herd. Erna sounded apologetic, "I should have warned you. She gets angry when she finds out you don't have food." She sat down on the soft grass, watching the horses graze, and Mikasa sat next to her. It was so peaceful, Erna thought, one could almost forget that they lived in a nightmare world.

"Are you feeling better?" Mikasa asked.

"Slowly," Erna answered, "You were right. I'm slowly starting to remember things." She paused, "But then I'm not sure if they're reliable memories."

Mikasa smiled and put her hand on Erna's shoulder, "I'm sure everyone will help you fill in the gaps at dinner… and boast about how much they drank and then complain about how hung over they still feel."

Erna lay back on the grass, folding her hands behind her head and watching the clouds. They were quiet for a while. Mikasa finally said, "Eren told me you and Levi are together." Erna winced. Her recovered memory regarding the previous night and Eren was one of the ones she didn't think could be real, but that would explain how he knew. "That's all he said?" Erna asked. "Yes," Mikasa answered. Erna was relieved. She didn't want Mikasa to resent her, not just for practical reasons, but because more than anyone else Mikasa treated her with genuine compassion like she was pretty sure a friend would.

Erna knew it was useless to deny anything, "I don't know if "'together'" is accurate. It's… I dunno… it's weird. I can't tell what he feels about me. He gives me what I need, but it's possible he only does it to keep me thinking clearly so I can continue to be useful to you guys."

Mikasa was quiet for a second and then said, "I think I could tell that you loved him before you could." Erna nodded, she didn't doubt it. Mikasa had proven herself to be incredibly observant. Mikasa went on, "And I don't think he would devote so much attention to you if he didn't like you being around. I think you two just express yourselves differently from most people."

Erna sat up and looked at Mikasa, quietly asking, "How do you know so much?" Mikasa smiled and shrugged.

Erna turned back to watch the grazing horses and teased, "You're too smart for Eren, you know." Mikasa wouldn't admit that she liked him, but said, "He's not the smartest, but he's very earnest and sincere."

Erna sighed, "I feel so strange lately." Mikasa put her arm around Erna's shoulders, "I know. You've been different the past few days. It was hard to figure what you thought or felt before, but it's easier now."

"I didn't feel anything before…" Erna sighed, "Now colors seem brighter, more saturated… All these new feelings are a lot to take in. It's all very over stimulating. I don't know how people manage it."

Mikasa squeezed her hand, "You'll get used to it."

Erna said quietly, "How do you know?"

"We're friends, I think I know you pretty well."

Erna leaned her head on Mikasa's shoulder and asked, "Since we're friends, will you do me a favor?"

"Of course," Mikasa replied, thinking Erna was going to ask her not to tell anyone about her and Levi. Even if she did want to tell anyone, which she didn't, no one would believe her anyway.

"Will you cut my hair?"

Mikasa was caught off guard and didn't answer right away. Finally she said, "Sure."

"But I want real bangs. I don't know how you can stand having it in your face all the time."

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Mikasa and Erna came to dinner late-ish. Everyone was already halfway through eating. Connie dropped his fork and pointed at Erna, yelling, "Holy shit! Did that happen last night?!" Everyone turned to see Erna's hair cut into a chin-length bob of curls with her bangs falling neatly straight over her forehead. "You can't criticize anyone's hair, Connie," Sasha scolded him and rubbed his peach fuzz.

Connie pushed her hands away, smoothing his stubble as if she had messed it up, "I didn't say it looks bad, I was just afraid that was one more thing I couldn't remember from last night."

"It looks very nice, Erna," Krista smiled.

Erna frowned and sat down. She didn't want them to think she did it in order to look nice. "There was just no point in keeping it long and having to tie it up every day. This is easier."

Jean saw that she was uncomfortable with the attention her hair was getting, so he changed the subject asking, "Why are you in uniform?"

Erna groaned and put her head down on the table.

Around 9pm Erna passed Levi's office and knocked on the door to his apartment instead, guessing that was where he would be. After a few seconds, she decided to just go in. She knew he never seemed to answer when you knocked on his office door. It was probably because people who knew him well would enter either way and people who didn't would just go away after a minute. She closed the door and saw him sitting on the couch, head tilted back, pretty much the way he was this morning. "Did you finish work?" she asked him.

Levi straightened his neck and looked at her, his face didn't change from its usual unreadable expression, but he said "Oh my god." He stood up and walked over to her. Her curls that he used to only be able to see when she pulled them out of her tight bun were now perfect large spirals framing her face. She looked more like a porcelain doll than a human being. He spun one of her curls around his finger and asked, "What did you do?"

"I cut my hair…"

"That was a rhetorical question. I can see that you cut your hair." He pulled on a curl and let it go. It bounced back perfectly into place. "You look so much younger. Are you trying to make me feel like a pervert?"

"… Is that a rhetorical question?"

He glared at her and she stammered, "I – It was not my intention to make you feel like a pervert, Captain Levi."

He leaned in closer to her, "What am I going to do with you?"

"Punish me!?" her eyes glowed. She sounded way too happy.

Levi smiled, "What do you think is a fitting punishment?"

"Anything!" She leaned against him and nuzzled her head into his chest.

"Anything at all?" He tried to think of something she actually wouldn't enjoy. As much as he liked making her scream, he couldn't let her think she would always get what she wanted.

"Mm-hmm," she murmured.

"Then you have the day off tomorrow. That's your punishment."

Erna pushed away from him. "No! What? You can't!"

"Don't argue with me," he said coldly.

Erna groaned, "Please, please, please, do anything else!"

"Two days off and you're not allowed to touch yourself again until I say otherwise. Do you want to keep going?"

Erna's jaw dropped. She could not even fathom the thought of two whole days of free time. "No, Sir." She looked at the floor and turned to leave.

"And don't try to go to Hange to assign you tasks," Levi added.

"Damnit!" Erna shouted and slammed the door behind her.


	8. Idle Hands

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Comic relief. Then emotions. Then comic relief. Then sex. Then cuteness. This is the order in which things should happen in real life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: I do not own Attack on Titan or any of its characters. I own my imagination type things like my OC and these words you may or may not be about to read.

"So sulky, Erna." They sat at a table eating breakfast and Sasha poked at Erna with the end of a roll. "I think you need to eat more."

"She's cranky because she has the day off," Connie told Sasha.

Erna's arms were crossed tightly over her chest and she stared down at her coffee. "Two days," she corrected him as she knocked the roll out of Sasha's hand.

Sasha picked the roll up off of where it landed on the floor and dusted it off, muttering "You brat. I'd kill to have three days off in a row." She took a bite out of her floor roll.

"I just want to be useful and helpful to humanity." Erna pouted. "How is a vacation conducive to that?"

"Fine," Sasha said between mouthfuls, "If it will make you feel better, I'll let you clean my room." Erna glared at her. "What?" She held up her hands in defense. "That would help me! I'm humanity."

"I'm not so sure about that," Jean chimed in.

"Sasha's more human than you, Horse-face." Eren couldn't resist.

Jean stood up and yelled, "You literally transform into a titan!"

Eren stood up, puffing out his chest and pointing at Jean, but before he could get out what he was going to say Mikasa pulled him away, saying "Come on, we'll be late." Everyone stood but Erna. As everyone walked away, Sasha gave Erna a light tap with her fist and said, "Enjoy your day off," just to be extra annoying.

Erna rested her chin on the table. A stray curl fell in front of her face and she blew it out of the way. "Stupid hair. This is your fault." She was going insane. Was Levi really doing this because he didn't like her haircut? He hadn't said that it looked bad, just that it made her look younger. He wasn't wrong. She had noticed her teammates treating her a little bit more like a child, which at first she had thought was just overfamiliarity – she wasn't scary to them anymore. She made a mental note to knock somebody out again soon, just to remind them that she was to be taken seriously.

But she didn't think Levi was torturing her like this because of her hair. That would be silly. She had done much worse things in the past than make herself look cute. Maybe that was it; maybe she needed to do worse things. She thought of all kinds of things that would piss off Levi, but decided against trying any of them. It wasn't worth the risk that he might just punish her with further time off and masturbation bans… which were just ridiculously awful now that she could remember Levi teasing her with his fingers and making her suck on them and … goddamnit. She needed something to do. Hange work was out, Levi had probably already spoken with her. It was a long shot, but she could try to go over Levi's head.

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Erna found Erwin walking and talking over some papers with one of the squad leaders. She saluted them and Erwin put his hand on the other man's back, asking him to get back to him later. He turned to Erna, "I haven't seen you in a while. I hope things are well with your new assignment."

"Hai, Commander Erwin, thank you for adding me to the elite squad, it's an honor," Erna said flatly. She paused and then added in a softer tone, "It's just… I was hoping to be busier…"

"I see. What does Levi have you doing now?"

"Forced vacation time," Erna frowned. "Isn't there anything I could do? Can't you order me to do something else?"

Erwin laughed, "There are always too many things to do around here. I would, but I don't question Levi's methods. You better just accept the vacation time."

Erna said quietly, "To be perfectly candid, Sir, I feel guilty when I'm not actively doing anything to help."

Erwin put a hand on her shoulder, "Erna, I know you haven't had a chance to rest since you joined the Survey Corps. You're very skilled and very dedicated," he paused, looking somewhat troubled, "and we thanked you for your skill and dedication by overusing you. Now that you're an elite squad member you're going to have to get used to being used more appropriately and not expect to carry everyone and do everything. The elite squad is assigned fewer missions, but they're of greater importance. Your squad normally wouldn't have even been on that escort mission the other day, but Levi insisted."

"I understand, Sir." Erna sounded disappointed.

"You're going to have to accept that you're being useful to us just by being here."

Erna nodded and saluted, "Hai, Commander Erwin."

Erwin felt bad for the girl. He knew that of all the soldiers under his command she was the least deserving of this guilt complex that tortured her, but on a tactical level her self-abuse worked to their advantage. She was a good soldier because she worked harder and she worked harder because she felt like it wasn't good enough. It was exploitative, but as Commander of the Survey Corps he hoped she would never stop feeling guilty. On a human level, he couldn't help feeling paternal towards the girl. Her youthful look and size would probably bring that instinct out in anyone if not for the cold, dead look in her eyes most of the time, but right now she looked sad and vulnerable. "I appreciate your candor. Come to me anytime you need to talk." She nodded and began to walk away, but he stopped her and added with a smirk, "But don't come to me to try to go over Levi's head and contradict his orders."

Erna felt defeated. Her last resort was a failure. "No Sir. I apologize."

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Connie left the shared washroom on his floor feeling great. Training was hard, but a hot bath feels even better when you're exhausted and sore, he thought. He whistled on the way back to his room, but was distracted when he noticed two blonde heads of hair huddled and looking out a corridor window. He went over and surprised Armin and Krista, loudly inquiring "What are we watching?" He looked out the second story window and saw nothing.

"Wait for it," Armin told him.

Two seconds later, Connie saw Erna on Raven, galloping around the castle and just like that she was out of sight again. "She's been racing laps around the castle for half an hour… maybe longer, but we noticed her half an hour ago," Armin told him.

"That was 3 minutes," Krista estimated.

Armin calculated quietly to himself, "She's averaging something like a one minute mile."

"Exercising on vacation time. Right. That's totally sane and normal," Connie said sarcastically. "I'm not worried about it. I'll worry when she stops being weird." They kept watching, but after a couple of minutes they didn't see any sign of her. "Maybe she's done," Connie said. Then they saw Raven trot around the corner, rider-less, and put her head down to graze. Krista immediately feared the worst and began to run to go down and see if Erna was okay, but Connie stopped her, calling her back and pointing out the window. They saw Erna angrily stalking up behind the horse and yelling, "You lazy jerk! You know you need the exercise! Get back here!" Raven ignored her and kept grazing, but when Erna got close to her, she kicked at her, trotted further away, and put her head down to graze again. Connie laughed, enjoying that someone else's horse was as much of a lazy ass as his.

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After taking a long time to completely scrub away the dirt and grass she had acquired when Raven bucked her off, Erna skipped dinner. She didn't want to hear any more teasing from her teammates. She knocked on Levi's office door and let herself in. He looked up from his desk and asked in a bored tone, "Did you come to whine some more?"

Erna saluted and tried to sound very professional, "No, Sir, I came to very respectfully inquire as to whether I could be given permission to begin training with the team again. I personally believe I've had enough time off, but I will unquestioningly respect any decision you make."

"That's better," he said. He motioned for her to come over behind the desk and she kneeled in front of him. "Have you thought about the reason that you insist on working yourself to death?" he asked her.

Erna thought for a second. "I've never considered it," she answered honestly.

"Don't you think it has something to do with the way your family was killed, leading you to think that you don't have any intrinsic right to life?" When he finished the question, he could see Erna's face change dramatically from a cold calm to shock as if she had just been stabbed in the chest.

Erna's mind reeled. She was shocked that Levi knew about her family. She couldn't remember summarizing her childhood for everyone when they were drinking the other night. She almost started to think about what he was saying, but it was painful, so she chose to block it from her mind. Her face returned to its usual calm and she answered, "I've never considered it."

Levi sighed, "You're going to have to get over this."

"You sound like Erwin," Erna knew she had slipped up the second she said it.

Levi raised an eyebrow at her. "You talked to Erwin?" She paused, but finally nodded. "To try and go over my head and undermine my order to take time off from working?" He said this in a more matter of fact tone than a questioning one. Erna looked at the floor. "Trying to deny it isn't going to help you, you know."

Erna sighed, "Am I really so predictable?"

"To me you are. I'm only surprised that you didn't try to go to Hange."

Erna asked, "You checked with her?"

"Of course." He lifted her chin to look at him, "I know you think this is very unfair, but there's a reason for it."

"It's not really my hair, is it? It'll grow back."

"No, it's not. But really, for fucks sake, you already looked too young before. Now you don't even look real. You look like a fucking doll," he teased her.

"That's not fair. You look young too."

"How old do you think I am?" Levi raised an eyebrow at her.

She paused, thinking, and then said, "I don't like this game. This feels like a trap."

"Answer honestly and you won't be in trouble."

She looked at his eyes, as if studying them. "Twenty-six?" He didn't answer. "Thirty?" He half-smiled at her. "You're not going to tell me even if I get it right, are you?"

"No, but for the record: you weren't right. Let's just say I'm too old for you."

Erna pouted, "Does that mean you won't punish me anymore?"

"I'm punishing you right now."

Erna groaned, frustrated, "I don't even understand what for!"

"This isn't fun for me either." He leaned down and moved his face closer to hers, "Do you really think I wouldn't rather bend you over this desk and smack your ass until your screams turn to moans and you beg me to let you come?"

Erna's eyes glazed over. Now she couldn't think of anything else.

"But we're not doing that," he shattered her daydream, "because first I want you to accept the idea that you're just as worthy of life as anyone else whether you're being helpful to the cause of humanity or not."

"… I'll try…"

Levi had a feeling that she wouldn't really try. He had to put it another way. "Look, you love me right?" She nodded emphatically. He went on, "Then only survive to make me happy. Don't think you need to do anything to atone for being alive."

"I can definitely do that." Erna smiled.

"See that you do." Levi turned back to his desk.

Erna thought that was the end of the conversation. She resolved that she would stop letting herself feel anxious about being idle if that was what Levi wanted. She got up to go back to her room.

When her hand reached the door handle Levi said, "Did I say you were dismissed?"

She turned around. "I thought you were done with me."

Levi opened a drawer of his desk and took out a riding crop. They were issued to every member of the Survey Corps with a horse, but the horses were so fast and well trained that no one ever used them… except maybe, Levi thought, for what he was about to use it for. "I'll tell you when I'm done with you."

Erna very nearly flew from the door to eagerly stand beside him. Levi moved his chair back from the desk and bent her over his lap, roughly pulling her pants down. White cotton panties again, he groaned inwardly. He set the crop down on the desk and grabbed a pen-knife, swiftly cutting them off with two neat slices.

"Hey! If you keep doing this I'm not going to have any underwear left," she complained.

Levi told her, "If they were nicer, I wouldn't destroy them. Have you ever heard of lace?"

Before she could answer, he picked up the riding crop and brought it down hard on her perfectly rounded ass. She hadn't expected he would hit so hard right away and she screamed half because of the pain and half because of the shock of it. He whipped her ass a couple more times and then paused for a few seconds. When he finally felt her muscles relax he gave her another hard smack with the crop and made her yelp. He leaned down and whispered in her ear, "I was waiting for you to stop expecting it. You make the best noises when you're surprised." That elicited a long moan from her and she bucked her hips against his lap. He turned his attention to her already wet pussy and barely brushed her clit with the end of the riding crop.

She moaned loudly enough that he was actually almost concerned someone passing by outside would be able to hear. He held the riding crop up to her mouth. "Hold this in your teeth. Don't drop it." She did as he said and he rewarded her by sliding a finger inside her. She gasped and almost dropped the riding crop, but she caught herself and clenched her jaw tighter. Levi entwined the fingers of his other hand in her hair and pulled her head up, making her arch her back. He slid his finger in and out of her in a slow rhythm. When she got impatient and started to squirm in his lap, trying to get him to go faster, he slid a second finger into her and pulled her hair tighter, warning her, "Hold still." She stopped moving, but through her clenched teeth she made a sound that was half pleasure and half frustration.

Levi pumped his fingers in and out of her, brushing her clit every few seconds. He stopped when she was shaking and seemed about to come. When she realized he was stopping she made a whining noise. With his hand still in her hair, he guided her down to kneel on the floor. He took the riding crop out of her mouth and replaced it with his fingers which she greedily licked clean. That set him off, he felt like he couldn't hold back anymore. He ripped her shirt open to be able to see her breasts rising and falling with her quick, short breaths. "Perfect," he said to himself. He didn't want to slow down to remove his 3DMG straps, so he only partially pulled his pants and briefs down to free his almost painfully hard cock.

Erna got that surprised look in her eyes that drove him crazy. He took his cock in his hand and tapped it on her partially open lips. "Open your mouth." He slid himself in between her lips into the wet warmth of her mouth and had to fight the urge to wrap his hands in her hair and roughly fuck her face; not that he ruled out that possibility for later, but this was all new to her and he didn't want to traumatize her just yet.

For a minute he let her figure it out for herself as she tried different things, sucking and licking and finding out what made him moan and what made him thrust his hips, but he had a limit to his patience. He put his hands in her hair and pushed himself into her mouth up to the base of his cock, feeling her throat muscles contract around him. She struggled, but he held her there for a second before he let her go and removed his cock so that she could gasp for air. He tapped her cheek with his cock while she caught her breath and told her, "You have to relax your throat and try to breathe through your nose."

Her response came between deep breaths, "Should have. Told me. That. First." When she could breathe sufficiently again she playfully licked the tip of his cock.

"Ready?" he asked. Her answer was to take his cock in her mouth again. He wrapped his fingers in her hair and pushed down her throat slowly this time. He held himself there while she tried to acclimate, but he was quickly running low on self-control. He drew himself back a little, letting her get a breath through her nose and then thrusting back in. He found a rhythm that worked for her and pushed his cock a little harder down her throat every time. He let himself finally stop holding back for her sake and he just concentrated on the way her tight little throat felt around the tip of his cock. In a minute he was cumming with his cock deep in her throat so that she had no choice but to swallow or choke. When she chose the first option without complaining, he withdrew his cock from her mouth and fell into his desk chair.

Erna crawled to him and nuzzled her head into his lap. He gently pulled one of her curls. "Lick it clean," he scolded her as if she obviously should have thought of that. She carefully licked any remaining cum from his cock, leaning back on her heels and admiring her work when she felt she was done. Levi stood up, fixed his clothes, and put the riding crop back in his desk drawer.

"Why do you have that in your desk anyway?" Erna asked as she pulled her pants back up and picked up her second pair of panties that Levi had now rendered useless and threw them into the waste basket next to the desk.

"For you, obviously. What a ridiculous question." Levi responded.

Erna stood up and started re-buttoning her shirt, thinking that Levi was about to dismiss her as usual. "So I can go back to work tomorrow?"

"Did I say that you could?"

Slowly the realization came over Erna's face. "… Wait. I thought you changed your mind!"

"Why would you assume such a stupid thing? When I give you an order I mean for it to be followed." Levi was enjoying her frustration.

"But…"

Levi stood closer and looked down at her, saying sternly, "No work. No touching yourself. Twenty-four more hours." He grabbed her wrist and dragged her behind him as he went over to the door to his apartment.

"What are you doing?" She protested.

"Making sure you follow orders." He pulled her through the apartment to his bedroom and closed the door. "Get undressed." She quickly did so, probably hoping he was going to do something to make her come, he thought. He had been teasing her pretty mercilessly the past couple of nights, but he didn't want to let her come yet. "Get into bed."

Erna sat herself on the fluffy comforter of his queen-size bed. Levi undressed, putting his clothes into a hamper instead of leaving them on the floor. Of course, Erna thought. This was the first time she saw him without any clothes on. He was more muscular than she thought, especially his back. He moved to the end of the bed and she felt nervous or excited or both, wondering what he was going to do. He grabbed the comforter and pulled it out from under her so she was now sitting on the sheets. He told her to lie down, then he got into bed next to her and pulled the comforter over both of them. "Wait… what is this?" Erna was confused.

"I'm going to sleep. You don't have to if you want to lie here awake all night." He closed his eyes. He turned her so that she was laying on her side with her back to him and he put an arm around her.

"Aren't you worried someone will see me leave in the morning?"

"Did I say you were allowed to leave in the morning?" He held her tight. "I changed my mind; you're not allowed to lie here awake all night. I can't sleep if you keep talking at me."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading this!


	9. Provocation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Smut. Immediately.  
> Later, Erna has sort of an emotional catharsis, which I don't like writing, but it felt like an inevitability and had to be gotten out of the way. I make up for it by ending the chapter with so much smut. Boo feelings. Yay sex.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: I do not own Attack on Titan or any of its characters. I do definitely own Erna Raban – she was born from my brain like Athena.

Erna woke up before Levi. This would, for most people, be a trivial event of no significance, but for Erna it was fraught with difficulties. Should she wake him up? Should she carefully remove his arm from around her waist and get out of bed to retrieve her clothes and get breakfast? She didn't want to do the wrong thing. She supposed she could just lie there and wait, but that was the most difficult of any of the options she could think of. Erna never lay awake in bed. Beds were for sleeping. If you woke up then you were supposed to get out of bed as had been her habit for most of her entire life. So she decided to try to go back to sleep. She closed her eyes and slowed her breathing for one minute… maybe two… It was impossible. Early morning birds were chirping outside and faint sunlight was filtering through the windows.  _How does this "sleeping in" thing that people speak of work?_  she thought to herself.

Erna stretched and fidgeted, only half-waking Levi up. He pulled her closer, encompassing her in both of his arms and holding her tightly. He had an insistent morning erection that he unconsciously rubbed against her smooth thighs. Automatically his one hand slid down from her waist to part her legs and tease her clit while his other lightly pinched one of her perfectly round nipples and then the other. Lazily, he left her clit to play with her pink little lips until his fingers were drenched in her wetness which he then placed in her mouth letting her lick and suck them clean while he began rubbing her clit again with his other hand. It was too easy to make her moan and writhe against him. He brought her up to the edge of an orgasm and stopped, rolling over and getting out of bed.

"Nooooooo," she whined, "Why won't you ever let me come?"

He walked around the foot of the bed, heading past her towards the washroom to take his morning bath, reassuring her, "I will eventually." He turned, expecting to see her expression of utter frustration, but she was now distracted by his hard cock and staring at it intently, almost drooling. He changed course and went back to kneel on the bed, holding his cock in front of her lips. "You want this?" he asked. Instead of answering, she simply opened her pretty little mouth. He tapped his head on the tip of her tongue a few times and then got up, heading to the washroom again, telling her, "No time. I have to work today, unlike you."

Erna made a loud groan of sexual frustration and punched a pillow behind her. "How can you have so much self-control!?"

"How can you not? You're supposed to be this crazy-disciplined little super soldier." He gave her an evil smile and closed the door to the washroom behind him.

"You do horrible things to me," she said, but not loudly enough that he would hear her behind the door where she was sure he was jerking off. She bit her lip and moved her hand down to rub her clit, thinking it would only take 5 seconds or fewer to come. Almost instantly her body felt warm and her breathing became short. She felt her mind start to go blank, but was snapped back to reality by Levi's voice from the other side of the door, "Stop touching yourself." She screamed in frustration and threw a pillow at the door.

Twenty minutes later, Levi came out holding a towel around his waist. Erna was lying on the bed, hands behind her head, brow furrowed in seemingly deep thought. She didn't turn to look at him. He began getting dressed and said, "I can see your brain working. What are you thinking about?"

"Nothing… Counting… Trying not to have sexy thoughts. I'm up to two thousand one hundred and fifty-eight." She sat up. "Can I go yet?"

"Definitely not."

Erna had a mental list of things she wanted to get done with her final day off, but she didn't mind staying and watching him get dressed. Somehow, against all reason, it was sexier than watching him get undressed. She watched with genuine fascination as he tied his cravat. He made buttoning up a shirt look graceful.

When Levi finished with the 3DMG harness and pulled on his boots, he told her to lie down on her back. Erna quickly flattened herself on the bed, looking excited to do so. He thought it was cute and pretty naive how she still kept wrongly assuming that he was going to do something she would like. He took two cravats from the dresser and moved over to the bed, quickly tying each of her wrists to the headboard. "Since you have so much trouble following the simple order to do nothing and I can't supervise you all day…" There was that surprised look again that he loved so much. He stood back and enjoyed the sight of her naked and tied up, almost wishing he planned to stay.

Erna gave one of the ties a little tug, testing it out, and decided, "I can easily get out of this, you know."

"I know." He raised an eyebrow and asked her, "What do you think will happen if you do?"

She relaxed her arms and sighed, "You'll be very upset with me and do things that I won't enjoy."

"Bingo." He buttoned the cuffs of his shirt and reached for his brown leather jacket. "So just relax." He made it a point to not tell her when or even if he would come back as he left and closed the door.

* * *

_Some time later._

"Ninety-nine… One hundred… One hundred and one…" Erna counted out loud as she brought her knees up to her chin with each reverse crunch. She had played briefly with the idea of untying herself, walking around, doing some push-ups, snooping through drawers, and somehow tying herself back to the bed before Levi came back… but he would know. Somehow he knew everything. So she decided to do whatever exercise she could while lying on her back. Leg raises and reverse crunches were all she could come up with.  _He just said to relax_ , she rationalized,  _this just happens to be how I relax._  "One hundred and two… One hundred and three…"

* * *

Levi oversaw his squad's training from a distance, standing under one of the stone archways separating the castle from the courtyard and sipping his tea. Most squad leaders tended to need to supervise their squads closely, staying on top of new recruits and keeping them disciplined. But Levi could trust his squad to stay on task for the most part. He only came down from his office randomly to scare them and keep them from getting too relaxed and slacking off.

He heard heavy boots behind him.  _Erwin._

Commander Erwin stopped and stood next to Levi, watching the squad along with him for a few seconds, before asking, "Have you seen Raban today?"

Levi didn't turn to look at Erwin, but kept his gaze fixed on the courtyard. "Why?"

"She came to me seeming troubled yesterday. I was hoping I could have another talk with her, make sure she's doing better. I can't give you details yet, but we may be planning a mission that we'll need you and your squad for."

Levi said in a completely deadpan tone, "She's tied to my bed."

"Ha!" Erwin let out a hearty laugh and slapped Levi on the back thinking he was making a joke. Then he looked down at his face and saw he was completely serious. It was disconcerting. Erwin knew people had needs, but he didn't like to be reminded that his soldiers had feelings or anything that was out of his control. "Levi…"

Before Erwin could begin an asinine lecture, Levi held up his hand to stop him. "There aren't any rules about relationships between Survey Corps members." This was true only because there didn't need to be any rules. Their casualty rate was so high that relationships rarely lasted. The odds were against both members of a couple surviving more than a year. Knowing that they faced death on a regular basis, most soldiers found it difficult to muster enthusiasm for long-term relationships, opting instead for casual sex which was not discouraged as a morale booster. The old adage: "Sex and death. They're different, but the same."

"I know, but damnit, listen to me," he was raising his voice. He caught himself, took a breath and said more quietly, "Look… If you both can continue to be professional and keep your emotions, which frankly I'm surprised to find out either of you even have, out of your work, then I can't object to anything you do. But there are practical considerations. What will it do to the morale of your squad if you treat her differently?"

Levi took a sip from his tea, still not turning his eyes from the courtyard to Erwin. Levi wanted to say something shocking to get him to shut up and nothing was more shocking than the truth. "On a good night, I make her run laps around the castle until every muscle in her body aches, then I inflict pain and humiliation on her in variously cruel ways, bring her to the edge of orgasm and leave her in maddening sexual frustration." He took another sip. "I don't think anyone's going to complain about 'special treatment.'" He didn't need to look to know Erwin's jaw had dropped. "Close your mouth before a bug flies into it."

Erwin did erase the shock from his face and finally replied, "As long as you know what you're doing…" Erwin kept everything compartmentalized. As Commander of the Survey Corps, the whole thing was still worrying to him. But as Levi's friend, he guessed he felt happy for him. "You sadistic bastard," Erwin smiled and lightly elbowed the shorter man.

* * *

_Elsewhere._

Erna tried to figure out what time it was from the way the sunlight made shadows on the walls.  _Three o'clock, maybe?_  She turned her eyes to the posts of Levi's wooden bed frame. They almost reached the ceiling and were intricately carved with beautiful vines and flowers. Normally detailed woodwork like that would show dust in every difficult to clean crevice, but this was perfectly polished and still looked brand new. She wondered if he dusted everything every day. She wondered how long that took. She wondered again what time it was.

She began to think about unpleasant things, which was why she tried to always stay busy. Not being busy gave her time for her mind to wander. She thought about how many people she watched die thus far, thinking there would be more in the future. She thought about watching the slaughter of her family, about how that was the last time she felt things before meeting Levi. When she let herself think about it she knew Levi was entirely right about why she always wanted to work herself to death. In the years between her family's death and the Trainee Corps, she lived in a haze of numb emotional shock. The only thing she ever felt was a hint of guilt in the back of her mind that she had been the cause of the brutal murder of the only people who loved her. She hadn't felt the will to live, but also didn't feel strongly enough about dying to kill herself by any more immediate method than starvation or exposure. It was a self-perpetuating cycle: She felt only emptiness and guilt, which led her to keep herself on the edge of death, which left her too exhausted and broken to feel anything but emptiness and guilt. The dynamic changed when she joined the Trainee Corps, but in essence everything was the same. Having not grown up with the instinct for self-preservation she could work harder and push herself more in training because she was well-practiced in not caring about what happened to her body. The guilt in the back of her mind, the idea that she didn't deserve to live, didn't go away but ironically became the reason to live. The skills she had honed by punishing herself in training could be used to help other, more deserving people to live, so she had to live and help humanity as atonement for her undeserved life.

These were all things she never really thought about because she never really gave herself time to think. In the Survey Corps there was always something to do or some way to distract yourself, especially if you were determined to be distracted. Now, she thought, it all seemed very silly – punishing herself constantly for feeling numb and guilty about her family. Now that she remembered what it was really like to love someone, she thought that they would have wanted her to be happy. She wiped a tear away with the white cravat tied around one of her wrists and knew that this was exactly what Levi wanted her to get out of this little exercise in mandatory free time.  _The bastard._  She smiled.

* * *

_Hours later._

Erna heard the apartment door open and shut. By now it was starting to get dark,  _so probably seven o'clock_ , she guessed. She heard Levi take off his boots.  _Partial sensory deprivation makes your hearing really sharp_. She listened to him walk around. Then the sound of footsteps stopped. She waited… and waited… Then she shouted, "So were you going to untie me or…?"

Levi opened the door to the bedroom and stood there. "I hadn't really thought about it. Would you like to be untied?" His voice was expressionless, but she knew he was teasing her.

"If you wouldn't mind," she said sarcastically.

He stayed in the door frame a little longer, just enjoying looking at her naked in the waning sunlight. She looked soft and delicate with her smooth skin and slender wrists and ankles. The pink little nipples of her perfect breasts were standing at attention from a slight chill. He liked keeping her vulnerable like this, or at least, enjoyed the illusion of her vulnerability. Realistically, he knew that if she wanted to free herself and get away from him she easily could. That fact made having this absolute power he had over her that much more satisfying. When he felt he had enough of just looking, he sighed "Fine," as if she were really inconveniencing him and he moved to the bed to untie her. "There's food out there for you, but if you get any crumbs anywhere I'm making you eat all your meals off the floor from now on."

* * *

Erna had forgotten how hungry she was until she heard the mention of food. She ate kneeling in front of the coffee table, trying to stuff her face quickly but also not let even a speck of food fall to the floor or the table. Levi sat on the couch, intently reading something. Erna licked the plate clean, checked that every surface around her was still immaculate, and then pointed to what Levi was reading, asking "What's that?"

Levi flipped a page and waited a second before answering her, "Research proposal… drafted by Hange… We'll be assigned to help her if Erwin approves it." He glared over the papers at her, "Don't look so excited."

Erna beamed and clapped her hands, "Work! Real work!"

Levi gave her an annoyed sigh, "The way you act, you would think this stuff isn't dangerous." He set the page down on the coffee table and made a note in the margins.

She leaned over as if she were curiously examining his work, "Are you done?"

Levi sighed and leaned back. "No, but maybe I could use a break. I didn't get to just lie in bed all day."

Erna crossed her arms. "That's not my fault. I would have been glad to have you join me."

"You say that now, but you don't know what I would have done to you."

Erna loved when he sounded all dark and threatening. "Good or bad, it's all the same. I like everything you do to me," she pointed out cheerfully.

"Then you'll like that I'm going to ignore you while I finish this," he picked up the research proposal from the table again.

"… I do not like that." Erna crossed her arms and pouted, but otherwise waited patiently.

...

* * *

Levi lay perfectly still while Erna straddled him. She pressed her fingertips lightly against his chest to keep herself balanced as she held herself over him. Very slowly she rocked her hips to rub herself up and down the length of his cock. She reached back and held him at his base and positioned him in line with her opening and proceeded to very slowly lower herself down just barely onto the tip and stop, holding herself there. She had been doing this for ten minutes now. Levi looked very annoyed and she thought she could start to understand why he seemed to enjoy teasing her so much. It was really fun.

"Don't think I'm not going to make you regret this." Levi sounded unamused.

"You very clearly said that I could take as long as I wanted and you wouldn't do anything to rush me or force me," she reminded him in a mocking tone. She wanted to see if she could get him to lose his temper. It happened incredibly rarely – really only once that she had seen – and she knew that she probably couldn't provoke him that far, but the idea of him losing control of his anger excited her, so she had to at least try.

"I didn't want to hurt you," Levi had thought it would be better to let her go at her own pace her first time… and he was wrong, "Now I do." She kept teasing him by bearing down just hard enough on his cock to let him barely inside, not pushing past the cervix, still maintaining her virginity and driving him up the fucking wall.

"That's what I wanted. I like it better when you do want to hurt me." She wanted to see that rare flash of anger in his eyes so badly. It was the only thing other than killing titans that could give her an adrenaline rush. Levi put his hands around her waist and she started to protest, "Hey, you said you wouldn't –"

Levi interrupted her with, "I'm not," as he pulled her forward and down to lightly bite her nipples and flick them with his tongue. When she relaxed he released his grip on her waist. He took his cock in his hand and rubbed his head up and down her wet slit. She breathed into his neck and whimpered and moaned incoherently. He pulled her close to whisper in her ear, "You're an evil little succubus," as he moved his hand down her writhing body and stopped at her clit. He just brushed the sensitive little area with his finger and she shuddered.

He stopped rubbing his cock against her and he grabbed her hair. He pulled her head up to look at him and told her very seriously, "I'm not going to rush you or force you, but I am going to make you beg me to fuck you." He rubbed her clit faster and let go of her hair. She was moaning loudly now, but he wanted her to scream. He reached back and smacked her ass hard, making her sit up sharply and let out a little yelp. He smacked her ass again and again, never letting up off of her clit. He asked her, "Who do you belong to?" She moaned something incoherent, so he smacked her ass again, "Tell me." Her eyes opened and focused on his.

She answered him clearly this time, "I - I belong to you."

He stopped rubbing her clit and took his cock in his hand, rubbing it against her and getting it lubricated. "And are you going to try to tease me anymore?"

Erna struggled with that answer. She wished she were able to tease him, but she wasn't in control anymore and her head was foggy. Now trying to tease would be equally… or probably more torturous for her than for him. Everything he was doing to her made her feel like it wasn't enough, like she wanted more and needed him inside her. Erna bit her lip and shook her head which earned her another smack of her ass which was starting to sting.

Shaking her head wasn't enough, Levi said, "Tell me."

The pain made her feel hot all over. She moaned, "I'm not going to try to tease you anymore. I want you." She moved her hips to try to rub herself harder against his cock, but he tilted it away from her.

"How do you want me?" he asked. Now he was torturing her.

She half-moaned, half-whined, "I want you inside me." He pressed his head against her opening and then withdrew, it was the exact same motion she had been trying to tease him with earlier and he was right – he was making her regret that.

"Are you sure?" he was mocking her.

She knew what he wanted. "Yes. Please? Please fuck me."

"I'm not entirely convinced," he held the base of his cock for her, "Show me how badly you want it."

She didn't care that he was humiliating her, she was glad to finally have a chance to take his cock. She leaned back and pressed herself down, but stopped again, not because she wanted to tease him, but because it was just harder than she imagined. She was so tight, even though she was really wet, and there was so much resistance it was hard to push past that point. "I can't," she looked at him pleadingly, worried that now he would torture her more.

Levi sighed as though she was making him feel very put upon, "You want me to?"

Erna bit her lip and nodded, "Please, please, please. Don't make me beg."

"You already are," he gave her an evil little smile. He pulled her down and held her tight against him. As he positioned himself, he whispered in her ear, "You'll like this, it's going to hurt." In one quick thrust he broke through her walls and buried himself inside her. She screamed in pain and clamped her teeth onto his muscular shoulder to muffle her cries, but he didn't move. Her natural instinct was to try to pull herself back up and off of him, but he held her there and reassured her, "Just wait."

It felt so good and so painful at the same time, but it was like ripping off a bandage, the pain only lingered for a few seconds. She released his shoulder and carefully rocked her hips back, pushing him a little deeper inside and was surprised at how such a small movement could produce such a huge feeling. She felt like she had always been physically and emotionally empty until now and she would never be able to get him deep enough inside of her.

He released his tight grip on her and folded his hands behind his head telling her, "Sit up." Erna obediently pressed her fingers against his chest and straightened up her torso. The way he just stared at her, not touching her, like he was observing a wild creature and was curious about what it was going to do, made her feel shy for the first time. "I'm not going to rush or force you, remember? Do whatever you want." He lay still and even though she was on top of him, it felt like he had all the power. She slid herself up his shaft, but not liking the empty feeling that brought, she quickly pushed down again, trying to force herself all the way down to his base but she felt too much resistance and inner pressure. She leaned a little forward, arching her back and angling herself to ride him more easily, gliding a little more than halfway down his cock and raising herself again in a rhythm that kept getting more rapid.

She stopped thinking so much about what she was doing as her body took over control making her just do what would feel good. She tried to impale herself harder, get him deeper inside her, aching with need for more. She rocked herself forward and leaned on him, gyrating and trying to rub her clit against his pelvic bone, moving her hips in small circles.

Levi removed his hands from behind his head, pushing her by her shoulders. "Get back up there," he made her sit up straight on his cock again, "I like to be able to see you." His interruption made her pause, so he bucked his hips up, pushing quickly deep inside her and giving her a jolt. She gave a little shout almost falling forward, but she pushed back against him, regained her balance, and began riding him again, keeping her back straight now so that he could watch her.

Levi put his hands behind his head again, looking amused like he was enjoying the show. Somehow the way he watched her made her feel vulnerable on a visceral level, like she was cornered prey that he was toying with. She closed her eyes, but he ordered her, "Keep your eyes open." When she did, he continued, telling her "Play with your tits." For a moment she hesitated, but quickly followed his instruction, because it sounded like a really good idea. When she lifted her hands to tease and pinch her nipples for him, he rewarded her, licking the tip of his thumb and rubbing it in slow circles over her clit as she slid up and down his cock. She quickly started to completely lose herself again, feeling her climax begin to roll in like a wave, he distracted her with his stern tone again, "Don't you dare come yet."

Erna whimpered, not knowing how that was possible, and she whined at him, "I can't stop it if you keep doing that." He took his thumb off of her clit, and grabbed her ass, roughly pulling her down and pushing himself up into her to the hilt, making her scream and fall forward onto him.

He teased her, "Tch, no self-control." He brought one hand up to press her down against him and held her ass tightly, making sure to keep his cock deep inside her as he sat up and flipped her over so that he was on top.

"Hey!" she made a half-hearted attempt to protest, "I'm supposed to be on top."

He pushed her legs further apart and, brutally slamming his cock as deep inside her as it could get, he warned her, "I've never been very patient. Feel lucky that I let you be up there that long."

She let out a long moan, feeling him deeper than she thought was possible, "Hai, Captain Levi!" He leaned over her, sucking on one of her hardened nipples and then the other as he thrust in and out of her at a much more punishing pace and depth than she had gotten herself used to. She alternated moaning with screaming with every jolt pushing her past her comfort zone, filling her up so deeply with every deliberate stroke that it hurt, but she didn't want it to ever stop.

_Just keep going_ , she thought,  _Please don't stop._  He drew himself up, watching her tits jiggle every time he pounded his hips against her. He felt her walls start to tighten around him and he pulled almost all the way out of her, leaving her with just the head of his cock inside, holding himself there. She immediately started whining in frustration and she reached for his shoulders and wrapped her legs around his waist, trying to pull him back in. It was hard to hold himself there – her legs were ridiculously strong – but he grabbed her wrists and pushed her back down, crossing her arms over her stomach and holding her still, reminding her that he was in charge. "Do you want more?" he teased her.

She hated having to concentrate on making herself coherent in between moans in order to beg him, "Please… Please fuck me, I'm so close…"

He let go of her arms and leaned over her again. "You want me to let you come?"

"Please!" she shouted in torment.

"Are you ever going to try to tease me again?"

"No! Please just fuck me! Please let me come!" She would say anything to have him back deep inside her.

"Good girl." He grabbed her thighs and pulled her into him while thrusting his hips forward. Her back arched and she felt her pussy throbbing as he began fucking her the way he wanted, drawing out only to quickly fill her up completely again and again. He reached down and watched her close her eyes and bite her lip as he played with her clit. He could feel her tense and go rigid around him, so he told her, "You can come now."

Almost immediately, she felt that hot, tingly feeling all over and her pussy clenched and released in spasms, as her climax washed over her. When it finally ended, she felt completely relaxed and drowsy, her pussy throbbing. Now she felt she could just enjoy the way his cock felt inside her without the sense of frustrated urgency, but her spasms had pushed Levi over the edge. He pulled out and pointed his cock at her stomach, shooting his hot cum all over her, hanging there a moment, and collapsing beside her.

Erna basked in the afterglow while he caught his breath. She felt heavy like she would never be able to move again, so she had no objections when Levi got up and said, "Don't move."

She closed her eyes and almost drifted off to sleep, until he came back with a damp washcloth, simply saying, "Here." She was disappointed that she would have to move now. He sat on the bed as she cleaned off her stomach and thought out loud, "Somehow I assumed you would opt for a more tidy way of coming."

He replied, "Somehow, I'm not thinking about being clean when I'm about to come. Next time I'll try to remember to make you swallow it instead."

She finished and held up the soiled cloth asking, "What do I do with this?"

"Toss it there." He pointed to a laundry basket next to the dresser. She successfully arced the balled-up cloth into the basket, relieved that she wouldn't have to find out what he would have done if she had missed. She lay on her back again and closed her eyes, half asleep already she dreamily said, "You know… you've never kissed me."

He looked at her. "You've never looked like you want to be kissed."

"What do I look like?"

"Like you want me to break you..."

"I suppose that's right," she said lazily and started to drift off to sleep, but then she felt Levi's hand on her cheek, gently turning her face towards him. She felt his lips press against hers softly and sweetly before parting her lips with his tongue, exploring her mouth a little, then withdrawing his tongue and lightly sucking on her lower lip, giving it a nip with his teeth. The kiss was over and she opened her eyes, staring at him in surprise. He looked pretty satisfied with himself, so she tried to look unimpressed and yawned, "Yeah, I can see how you would think I wouldn't like that. So gentle. You're not going to keep being nice like that, are you? It's gross."

She turned onto her side facing away from him and smiled to herself until she felt him slap her ass hard and she yelped. He lay down behind her and pulled her into him, giving her neck a bite. "Don't worry. You make it easy to not be nice."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I used line breaks here. idk why.   
> Thank you for reading!


	10. Chivalry

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This information will be relevant to you very soon: Most people confuse the definitions of "candle" and "candlestick," thinking that they are the same thing. A candle is a candle. A candlestick is the candle-holder, named for the cup or spike that you "stick" the candle in. That is all.

Erna was sitting on Levi's desk, naked again, while he stood in front of her fully clothed. She didn't mind; maybe even liked the disparity, the fact that he was even symbolically more powerful and less vulnerable than her. He grabbed her around her waist, pressing his fingers into her roughly, lowering his head to suck on one of her breasts and occasionally biting her to elicit one of her short screams. She wrapped her legs around him, trying to pull him in closer and grind her hips against his, but that only made him stop what he was doing and push her shoulders back, making her put her palms on the desk behind her. He pushed her until her torso was slightly angled away from him, leaning back on her hands, shoulders back and spine arched. He let her keep her legs around him, but he reached behind her on the desk and picked up a candlestick holding a burning white candle. He held it in front of her, letting her watch the wide tip of it pool with clear liquid wax. He told her, "You'll like this, it's going to hurt," her new favorite promise, and he tipped his hand, creating a burning river of pain on her skin. The candle wax dripped down in a line right between her breasts, pooling at her belly button. Her body arched and her thighs tightened around him with the pain of the heat, but she moaned. Her body interpreted the pain as intense pleasure and she was flooded with endorphins, feeling her ego drift away, she entered a state of thoughtlessness that always preceded her climax. But then Levi shook her. Through the fog of ecstasy she heard him tell her to get up. She fought to ignore him and immerse herself in the feeling just until she could get back to that state of thoughtlessness and release, but it was too late. She was awake.

"Nooooo. Why?" Erna tried to pull the covers over her head, but Levi grabbed her wrists, holding them tightly, almost constricting her blood flow, and stopped her. She opened her eyes to look at his face over hers; it was close and giving her a very serious look.

"You have to go back to your own bed."

She looked at the window. "It isn't even light yet. Why can't I just stay here? I want to go back to sleep."

He smirked. She was being particularly whiny and he had an idea as to why that was. "Were you dreaming?"

"No!" She said indignantly. His lips formed a slight, but knowing smile and it was infuriating. "Maybe I was dreaming about not being woken up before dawn and kicked out of bed!"

He let go of her wrists. "You were moaning in your sleep."

She wanted to smother him with a pillow. Instead, she kicked her feet out of bed and stood up, stretching her arms and asking, "What am I supposed to do back in my room?"

Levi watched her stretch, ran his eyes over her smooth skin, her perfectly toned round ass, her delicate waist. He imagined roughly grabbing her by her silky black curls and forcing his cock past her pouty lips, cutting off her air and making her gag on it. But… "Work and play need to stay separate. Go do whatever you normally do before work, I don't care."

She went to start putting her clothes on, but couldn't find her underwear. As she searched she informed him, "I  _normally_  only wake up ten to fifteen minutes before breakfast. It can't even be six yet."

"It's quarter 'til," he told her as he closed his eyes and put his head back on the pillow. "Are you looking for those awful white cotton panties? I destroyed them."

She stamped her foot in frustration. "Stop doing that! I'm not going to have any underwear left!"

He opened one eye and watched her getting dressed sans underwear. "I'm going to keep destroying them until you get new underwear. I can't stand them, they make you look pre-pubescent with your stupidly cute doll-face. Makes me feel like a creepy old man."

She had her pants on and now she was hopping on one foot, struggling with a boot. "That's just your problem. How am I supposed to get underwear that you approve of? Want me to go to the store?"

Watching her perky little tits bounce as she pulled her boots on was making him hard. He decided to close his eyes until she left or else he felt he was going to pull her back into bed and need to go through this all again later. "I'm sure you'll figure something out when you're finally out of underwear." He listened as she muttered some curse words to herself and slammed the bedroom door but tiptoed quietly out the door to the corridor, not wanting to attract the attention of anyone who might actually be awake at this hour. He rolled onto his back and imagined how he would punish her later for slamming the door as he stroked his shaft, tightening his grip up around the head of his cock, swirling his thumb over the tip, and stroking back down, repeating that motion again and faster while he thought about her perfect pink lips and how they would look wrapped around his cock as he choked her.

* * *

When Erna walked into the dining hall – coffee mug in hand – Sasha screamed, "Ernaaaa! I thought you were dead!" She waited for Erna to sit down before wrapping her in a hug and ruffling her hair, teasing her, "I'm so glad you're okay!"

Erna slapped her hands away and said, "If you keep treating me like a kid sister, I'm going to kill you," in the most serious voice she could.

"Aww, you're your usual cranky self, further proof that you are okay." Sasha went to pinch her cheek, but Erna grabbed her hand and slammed it down on the table.

Mikasa's eyes smiled as Sasha winced and drew her hand away, trying to shake the pain out of it. She addressed Erna calmly, "Sasha is teasing you, but we were a little worried. You weren't at dinner two nights ago and we couldn't find you at all yesterday."

Connie chimed in, "I told them you snapped and went out on your own to kill titans."

Erna acted unmoved by their concern, "I'm perfectly fine." She sipped at her coffee. "Tch. Really. I miss when you guys were more afraid of me."

Sasha stopped blowing on her fingers to say, "Nah, we know you too well now. You wouldn't hurt a fly and you're fun to pick on, especially ever since Mikasa cut your hair. You look so cute when you're annoyed. You're going to be the elite squad's little sister forever."

Erna's head hit the table. She grumbled something about slitting all of their throats in their sleep. Krista put a reassuring hand on her back, telling her, "Don't worry, we're going to get new recruits today, so maybe they'll be distracted from teasing you for a while."

Sasha got excited, "And new supplies! Which means more food!"

Connie high-fived her, "And more booze!"

"And obnoxious rookies," Jean groaned.

"Not as obnoxious as you," Eren replied, unable to not take a chance to insult Jean.

"Is it really that bad?" Erna wondered. She had not yet lived through the horror of being at headquarters when new recruits came in.

Jean explained, "It didn't used to be. The year we joined the Survey Corps we were pretty much the only recruits," and he sounded kind of proud. "We get more and more every year that titans don't break inside the walls and they get more and more obnoxious."

Erna remembered that when she had first arrived at the older Survey Corps headquarters, her peers had been a little rowdy. But they were excited, who wouldn't be? Most of them were dead by now. She winced at the thought, but shook it off and told them, "I am not drinking with you again."

"That is non-negotiable. Drinking is a team-building exercise." Connie told her with mock seriousness and made a stiff salute. "Besides, it's going to be rowdy and loud. You'll be awake all night unless you drink yourself to sleep."

Levi came in and interrupted them, "Oi, brats. Hange and I are going with Erwin. Don't slack off."

"Why do we have to stay here? We're the elite squad, we should be going with you guys, inspiring trainees to join the Survey Corps." Jean said this, even though he found trainees annoying, it was a rare chance to go inside the city.

Levi turned and looked at Sasha who was very busy stuffing a roll in her face, "I don't know that they would find you very inspiring. Better to keep you out of sight until it's too late for them to back out."

* * *

Everyone basically slacked off for the days that Erwin, Levi, and Hange were gone. After breakfast, everyone went off and did their own thing, but some of the things could be considered work and they felt that was good enough. Erna spent most of the day with her horse, going for quick gallops around headquarters, trying to teach her to go down on her knees on command, mostly getting kicked at and/or kicked. When she felt like she'd done enough to justify some relaxation, she walked back inside, sore and dirty, which she didn't dislike. "Pain is just another reminder that you're alive," she sighed contentedly to herself. She turned the corner to get her things from her room to take a bath, but was stopped by Eren's presence in front of her door.  _Sigh._

She walked up as if she didn't even see him and reached past him for her door handle as he began to say, "Hey, um…"

Erna opened the door, motioning for him to come in if he wanted. Eren seemed a little anxious to come in and she followed, shutting the door behind them and saying, "Don't think anything of this; I just don't want anyone to overhear what I think you're going to talk about."

"So you do remember that night we got drunk," he stated more than asked. She nodded in the affirmative. She was being especially closed off because she couldn't predict what he was going to say, but whatever it was she dreaded it. She thought,  _best case scenario, he just wants to acknowledge that it was strange. Worst case scenario, he wants to talk about feelings._ She disliked when people tried to talk about feelings that she could not sympathize with. He went on, "I just don't want things to be awkward. We haven't really had a chance to talk about it."

Erna moved past him to sit on her bed. "I think it's more awkward to talk about it," she said flatly. When she looked to his face, he looked like he was slightly confused by how she could be so cold. She figured maybe this would go faster if she could manage to not be so off-putting, so she went on in a more amiable tone. "Look, I just don't think it means anything. We were all drunk. There's not much else to talk about. I didn't feel used or taken advantage of or anything if that's what you feel awkward about."

"That's good." He seemed relieved, like he could breathe now.

"Do you?" she asked. He looked like he didn't understand the question, so she clarified, "Feel used or taken advantage of?"

For a second he still looked confused as if what she just asked him made no sense. Then he laughed. He put a hand on the back of his head and smiled, "Hell no!"

"You don't have a crush on me or anything, right? Because that would be awkward."

He said, "Oh god no," so quickly and so adamantly that she felt a little insulted, which probably showed on her face because he followed it up with, "I mean, don't get me wrong, I enjoyed it… like a lot. But I can keep that stuff and feelings separate. And you're not really my type."

She didn't know if she asked out of an actual feeling of curiosity or because she wanted to make him squirm for making her go through this awkwardness. Probably a little of both. "What  _is_  your type?"

"I'm not that picky. Just about anyone who isn't with a man who could kill me ten different ways with one finger," he was half-joking.

"That's fair." Erna smiled. She decided he wasn't as dumb as he sometimes seemed if he could manage to answer that question without actually insulting her.

"Besides, Sasha was right, you're like our little sister now. I feel protective of you more than anything else. I guess that's why I wanted to make sure it was all okay."

"I –," she started in, but he interrupted her before she could say it. "I know, I know, you don't need protecting. That doesn't have anything to do with it."

She crossed her arms and said, "That's illogical and insulting to my capabilities."

"Yeah, yeah, we all know you're tough, even though we act like we don't." Eren searched for the right words. How did you describe friendship to someone for whom the concept was foreign? "It's just, you know, we'd all hate for anything to happen to you. That's why I wanted to talk to you even though I knew this would be the most awkward conversation ever."

Erna changed the subject, because it  _was_  awkward. "You told Mikasa."

"Only that I saw you and Levi together. She got it out of me. She knew anyway, she just didn't have any hard evidence." Eren looked at the floor, a little ashamed that Mikasa was able to get the information out of him. The damn girl knew how to play him like a fiddle. "I didn't give her any details," but, he thought, that was mostly because she hadn't tried to make him give her any details. She was content with, and damn smug and self-satisfied about, being right.

"So now we can act like perfectly normal friends?" Erna said this to end the conversation more than anything else. She didn't really think she would ever act like anyone's friend. She was warm with her squad, but friendship still didn't make sense to her practical side.

"Well except for the perfectly normal part. None of us will ever be normal," he joked.

* * *

The next evening, Erna sat with her squad at their usual table, which they had reclaimed from some trainees who didn't know any better. The dining hall was an utter disaster. It was crowded, it was loud. The din was occasionally punctuated by the sound of someone falling out of their chair. There were a lot of bold statements made out of bravado about being badass and joining the Survey Corps. There were a lot of people trying to get drunken hook-ups off the ground and running. Older members either shook their heads and tried to ignore it or told the new kids to shut the fuck up. Erna's other squad members mostly took the latter route. Erna was decidedly not annoyed by the new recruits because for one, it wasn't worth the energy to her, and two, she knew that most of them would die on their first expedition anyway and as annoying as they were she couldn't feel angry at them. Even though she was getting over her guilt, she would always be more conscious than most about the mortality of other people.

Sasha had already finished a full glass of wine in less than two minutes and began refilling from their only bottle, but Jean reached across the table and grabbed it from her, shouting over the noise, "Sasha, we need to ration this!" He was kind of right, there wasn't nearly as much booze as last time… or actually, it only seemed that way because it was distributed among a lot more people. "Goddamn rookies," Jean mumbled. "There's barely enough here for a buzz."

"Here," Mikasa handed Jean her glass, "In the interest of rationing, only give me enough so that I'll be able to fall asleep despite all this." Jean filled her glass a third of the way and she took it back, opting not to drink it yet, but holding onto it for when she would need it, like a sleeping pill.

Jean went on scowling until he felt someone bump into his chair hard, making him spill his wine and almost knocking him over. He lost it and got to his feet to physically or verbally thrash someone, but he turned around to see a curvy, bubbly brunette girl. She winked at him and laughed, "Hey cutie." She ran her hands over his chest she asked, "Want to get out of here?" His jaw dropped. Eren and Connie teased him, "Yeah Jean, go ahead," because they knew and he knew that it was an unspoken rule that older members didn't fuck with new recruits especially before they were battle-tested. It was seen as probably the sleaziest, most shameful thing you could do. So it just didn't happen. Even if someone wanted to, the endless teasing they could expect from their teammates was a good enough deterrent for any libido. So Jean didn't answer the girl, instead turning around again, sitting down, and fuming. She shrugged and walked off to try and seduce someone else. Connie and Eren made kissy faces at Jean who slammed his fists down on the table and shouted, "Goddamn rookies!"

"They're really not as bad as you guys said. You really need to relax." Erna sipped her wine; she worried that if she didn't, Sasha would get a funnel from the kitchen and opt for a more direct way than constant nagging to try to force her to drink with them. Just as she finished saying this, a sweet-faced, broad shouldered recruit with dark hair and blue eyes tapped Krista on the shoulder. Her eyes widened in innocent surprise as she turned around in her chair. He got down on one knee, gently taking one of her hands in his and said, "I'm sorry to bother you, I just have a question." He only paused for a moment, and then continued, "Did it hurt?" sounding oh so sincere.

"Oh my god, Krista, don't say a word." Eren rolled his eyes.

Krista didn't take his advice. "Did what hurt?"

"When you fell from heaven." The guy barely got to finish the sentence as Mikasa twisted his arm behind his back, pulling him to his feet, and sending him stumbling away with her boot to his back.

"I think I am literally going to be sick." Erna was not exaggerating much. "But still, they're pretty harmless," as she said it, they all heard shouting and a chair being thrown somewhere across the room and the table looked at her as if they dared her to say it again. "Okay… so I can see why none of the squad leaders wanted to drink with us… but we should try to… make the best of it?"

Connie started to agree with her, ever-positive, "Yeah guys, Erna has a point, they're just young, dumb kids." Then a guy in a trainee corps jacket put a hand on Sasha's shoulder and said, "Hey baby -," but that was all he got out before Connie - so fast that no one could have even seen his face change from calm to rage - stood up, swung around, and punched him hard enough in the jaw to send him flying. Connie sat down again as if nothing happened. There was a beat of shocked silence at the table. Then Sasha leaned over, pulling Connie into a big bear hug and holding his face tightly against her chest, making him blush brighter than the sun as she shouted, "Aw Connie! You defended my honor!"

"I can't. I'm going to vomit," Erna promised this with a very straight face. Jean topped off her glass, saying, "Here, this makes it better." She emptied the glass in a few chugs. Armin warned her, and by association, everyone, "Careful, we still have training tomorrow."

Erna thought she would be fine with that. There had to be a happy medium between being drunk enough to sleep through the racket and not drunk enough to be hung over. Then she heard a deep, but immature voice behind her, "Hey doll-face…" She did not turn around, hoping for this guy's sake that he was trying to talk to someone else.

Jean spoke from experience when he said, "You don't want to do this, guy."

"Oh, come on, doll-face, I'm friendly. Turn around and show me what those cute little lips can do, I won't bite."

Erna closed her eyes and yelled inside her head,  _Ignore him. Ignore him. Ignore him._ Sasha was beside herself with laughter. She had to wipe a tear from her eye, "Oh my god, Doll-Face, I love it! That is your name from now on!"

That was what made Erna lose it. The mantra in her head changed to  _Ignore him, he's dead._  Without even turning to look the guy in the eye, she stood up, stepping to the side and behind him, grabbing the back of his neck and slamming his head down onto the table… again… and again… Some of her squad looked horrified and some were grinning, but either way they all grabbed for their glasses to keep anything from spilling. Before she could bust his head open Erna threw the poor guy on the ground. She didn't want to kill him… she wanted to kill Sasha, but she knew it would be seen as more acceptable to take her anger out on this guy and maybe an ebb in teasing from Sasha would be a byproduct of that. Now she could really get a look at him. He was about two or three times her size, strong like an ox, so she didn't feel too bad. He tried to roll over, but she put her whole body into a kick to his stomach, keeping him on his back while she grabbed a spoon off of the table. He was in too much pain to even try to get away as she straddled him, sitting on his chest, one knee on either side of his head.

The guy winced, closing his eyes, thinking she was about to punch him. But she wasn't, so she pried the eyelids over one of his eyes open and held the spoon in front of it. "Do you see this?" She didn't expect or wait for an answer. "This is what I'm going to use to remove your eyes," she said very calmly and very seriously. She had no intention of following through, but she very much wanted to scare the shit out of him.

Before she could further torture the trainee, she heard that familiar voice. "Raban," was all Erwin said, sounding very calm, as if he were greeting her in the corridor. He was standing over them. She cursed herself for not noticing such a huge guy in her periphery and quickly stood up. She grabbed the trainee by the arm and lifted him up with her and with a little difficulty got him standing on his own. Erna brushed him off and said, "Commander Erwin. We were just playing. Don't worry, he's perfectly fine."

Erwin gave her a look that said  _Don't insult my intelligence_. The guy looked dazed, but he saluted Erwin who put a hand on his shoulder, "Relax and go back to your friends. Don't mess with the veterans, they can be very surly." The kid all but ran.

Erwin gave her a stern look and Erna looked at the floor and complained, "He's being over-dramatic. I only hurt him a little."

Erwin sighed and told everyone, "Don't kill any of the new recruits, we need them," turning to Erna with another of his  _I'm very disappointed in you_  looks, he motioned for her to sit back down and continued, "Okay, first bad news and then good news. The bad news for you, but good for me, is that we got more new recruits than anyone expected, so people are going to have to start sharing rooms." This news got a loud, synchronized groan from the table.

Eren asked, "Can we kill them now?"

Erwin ignored him and went on, "If you could all work out arrangements for roommates on your own without being children about it you would save us a lot of time and trouble. You can find cots in the supply depot."

Jean sounded incredulous now, "There was good news?"

Erwin remembered, "Ah yes, Good news is that Pixis wanted me to give this to you, Eren." He produced a bottle of good vodka from his jacket and put it on the table. Before removing his hand from the bottle, he looked at them all very sternly as if they really were children, "Don't kill or maim anyone," he warned them as he turned and left to go notify others of the change in living arrangements.

Everyone who still had wine in their glass quickly emptied it and held it out to Eren as he began pouring shots, he said, "Drinking contest. Whoever loses has to room with Jean."

Jean quickly replied, "I'm fine with that," knowing that obviously Mikasa would lose.

Eren realized what he was thinking, "Wait. Nevermind. Should we draw straws?" No one was a huge fan of that idea. This seemed too important to leave up to chance.

"We could try being adults like Erwin suggested," Erna reminded them.

They rolled their eyes. Except Connie who motioned for them to quiet their grumbling and said, "Wait, you guys, I like where Erna is going with this." He turned to her, "So what you're saying is: If we only kill four rookies, we can all still keep our rooms?"

"… That was not at all what –" Erna was cut off by Eren, "Great plan! I second it!"

Connie slapped his hand on the table like a gavel, "Motion carried!"

Mikasa didn't even turn to look at Eren as she told him very seriously and very quietly, "I'm rooming with you." Eren held his head in his hands, annoyed that she always had to be right on top of him, resigned to his fate he replied, "I know you are." He had given up on wondering when she would ever stop being so insanely overprotective.

Erna made a calculated decision and grabbed Krista's hand, "I call Krista!" Krista looked surprised at the sudden outburst, but said "O- Okay." Erna explained, "You're the only one who doesn't pick on me and I suspect that everyone but you snores very loudly. You look like you would sleep perfectly peaceful like an angel."

"And you look like you would have screaming night terrors. You're perfect for each other." Jean teased her, annoyed at the suggestion that he may be a snorer.

Erna reassured Krista, "I do not scream in my sleep that often… but if I do, do not wake me up."

Jean looked to Armin, "Hey Armin, you're the only tolerable person here. Want to be roommates?" This was as close to a compliment as he was capable of giving.

Before Armin could even answer, Connie took offense, "Hey! Jean, what the fuck?"

"Connie, you are the worst roommate! You leave dirty clothes everywhere, and Erna's right, you do snore."

Connie looked around and figured out that left him and Sasha. She realized at the same time and pulled him into another hug, "Yay! Best friends! We're going to have so much fun!" Connie blushed again and tried to pry her arms from around him so he could get another shot of vodka.

Erna winked at them and teased, "Yeah, you guys are going to have  _so_  much fun." Sasha was oblivious as to her meaning and to the fact that Connie could not endure one of her hugs without his face turning beet red, but everyone else snickered.

Connie composed himself, ignoring them, and turned to share a very platonic high-five with Sasha who cheered.

Erna slid her glass to Eren requesting, "One more, so we can drink to behaving like adults."

"No way, I want to save the rest of this. And I don't want to have to carry Mikasa again," Eren was being a bad sport because he was irritated at not being able to choose a roommate. He probably would have chosen Mikasa anyway, but he hated when he felt like she was making decisions for them and treating him like a kid.

"Don't be a dick, Eren." Jean did not believe in the whole catching more flies with honey thing. At that moment they heard a glass break somewhere, followed by the sound of rookie giggling. There were more shouts, cheers, and obnoxiousness. They saw a big guy lift a girl over his shoulder to carry her off as she squealed in delight. Armin asked nicely, "Please, Eren," reminding him that they were in this together. Eren said nothing and didn't stop scowling, but began pouring everyone another shot.

* * *

Erna walked back to her room to get her things. After they drank more, they had run into the problem of deciding whose room each pair would move into as everyone was pretty attached to their rooms, except Erna. For her and Krista the decision was easy, since Erna had only a few things it would be easier for her to move into Krista's room. The only drawback was that she would have to sleep on a cot, but Erna decided she had slept in worse places and she didn't mind. She watched the floor as she walked, testing out how well she could maintain a straight line. She didn't feel half as drunk as last time, but it was difficult to tell since she had blacked out the last time, making it hard to remember what being that drunk felt like. She pondered all this as she bumped into Levi who was leaning against the wall next to her door.

"Really?" he sounded mildly surprised at her klutziness. "Watch where you're going."

"Watch where you're… standing? Were you waiting for me?"

He didn't answer her, but instead pushed her to the door, "Get your things."

Erna felt she didn't have any other witty things to say, so she just opened the door and started removing her uniforms from the dresser, putting them in a neat pile on the bed and tossing her soap, towels and a few other military issue necessities on top. She managed to carry the 3DMG and everything else in one arm and hold her extra pair of boots in her other hand. She turned around and faced Levi who was watching her from the doorway. After a beat, he asked, "That's it?"

Erna shrugged, "My life hasn't been very conducive to accumulating things."

Levi brought his thumb and forefinger to the bridge of his nose and exhaled a sigh. "Come on."

Erna followed him, carefully balancing her things in one arm. "Um… I'm supposed to move in with Krista, so can I just drop this stuff there first?"

"You really are dumber than usual tonight."

"Blame the alcohol." Erna almost stumbled. It was hard enough to balance without carrying an uneven load.

"Try to keep up." Levi kept a pretty quick pace as he led her to his room, opening the door, guiding her inside and shutting it behind them. He pointed to the floor next to the door frame, "Boots go there."

Erna dropped her boots and followed him as he went to the bedroom. He leaned against the foot of the bed and pointed at the dresser, "Bottom two drawers are yours." She just looked at him in confusion. He explained further as if she were experiencing partial brain damage, "For clothes…" Erna took a little time to realize she was moving in, but when she processed the situation, she moved to the dresser and began putting her clothes inside. Levi took her soap and threw it in a wastebasket, "Use mine. Yours is shit."

Erna finished putting her clothes away. They fit in one drawer, with some space leftover. She argued, "Soap is just soap. What's the difference? It all gets you clean."

Levi looked at her as if she had just called his mother a whore, "You could not be more wrong."

Erna dropped the subject, though she still disagreed. She held up her 3DMG, "Where does this go?"

"Wherever you think you would reach it the fastest in an emergency," he said as if it were the most obvious thing in the world and she was an idiot for wondering if every single thing had a specific place it should go.

Erna wanted to ask him why his particular brand of OCD was so unpredictable. Instead she looked around, thinking. She settled on putting it on the floor under the bedroom windowsill.

Levi asked her, "Why there?" as if this were a test and there were right and wrong answers.

"If anything happened, it would be stupid to try to deal with all those corridors full of people. I'd go out the window and maneuver off of the building." She felt pretty confident in her reasoning despite being a little drunk.

"Fair enough," Levi seemed satisfied enough with her answer, but it was always hard to tell with him.

For the first time she felt annoyed at how inscrutable he was being. She lashed out very mildly, "You really want me here? I thought work and play had to be separate."

"You really are a mouthy drunk," he was unamused at her throwing his words back in his face. "I have no problem keeping you here and keeping the two things separate and I'm hoping you're smart enough to be able to do the same. You're like a job in itself. Just behave and don't get anything dirty."

Erna thought about this for a second, and then asked, "What do I tell Krista?"

"I don't give a shit. Tell her whatever you want. Tell everyone I need you here so I can punish you and fuck you at my convenience. I'm not trying to hide you. I already told Erwin, so don't worry about it getting back to him."

Erna felt like this was probably a really sweet thing to say, but it was difficult to tell because his tone was never what one would call sweet. But she was quickly distracted by the words "punish," and "fuck," so she asked, "… Is now convenient?"

He leered at her, "Not tonight. You talk back too much when you're drunk. Your punishment tonight is not getting punished."

She pouted, but tried to remove the argumentative tone from her voice, "I promise to only speak when spoken to if that would change your mind."

Levi seemed to think about this, finally saying, "We'll see. Come on, I'm not leaving you here to go through my stuff." He made her follow him to the office and she kneeled next to his chair while he went over some things at his desk. She wanted to ask him if he ever stopped working, but she kept her promise in mind and her mouth shut. After a little while she put her head in his lap and dozed off, she didn't know for how long, but she was woken up by a tug of her hair and Levi's voice, "I was wondering how you were managing to stay quiet. Falling asleep doesn't count as being obedient, you know."

Thinking her efforts were in vain now anyway, Erna stood up and sat on the desk, complaining "It's hard to stay awake down there." She expected Levi to tell her to get down, but he didn't. He ignored her for a few minutes before saying, "I can smell the smoke from your brain cells burning out. What are you thinking so hard about?"

"I don't know… It's stupid." Erna was ashamed to say.

"I'm one hundred percent certain that it is, but that doesn't mean you're allowed to not tell me." Levi didn't look up from his work.

She paused to find the words, "It's just… I was thinking how it's disappointing how you'll never have to save me."

"That is stupid," he put down his pen and looked at her, "Explain yourself."

"I don't know… I guess it's because… at dinner earlier, some guy hit on Sasha and Connie laid him out and in a way it seemed really sweet. It's dumb."

"It is dumb, but it makes sense for you… You think that if you can't make me angry then I don't care about you and this latest dumb idea is just an extension of that."

She was shocked that he understood it so well when she didn't understand it at all. It was  _her_  brain after all. "I guess that hits the nail pretty well on the head." She really felt like an idiot.

"What dumb things are you thinking now?"

"I guess… that I'm sorry I'm fucked up." She looked down at the desk, wishing she could sink into the floor or just blink out of existence.

He actually looked angry at her for saying that. "Did I say you were fucked up? Don't give yourself that much credit, there are people who are a lot more fucked up than you are." He roughly turned her face to look at him, "Listen to me carefully because I don't want to have to repeat this. I happen to enjoy you and everything about you, which includes the particular way in which you are fucked up, but also the fact that you are strong and competent and you're never going to be a fucking damsel in distress. It wouldn't be fun to dominate someone who was actually weak." He pulled her off of the desk and guided her to straddle him in the chair so that he could keep her face very close while he quietly told her, "That said, if anyone were to actually somehow succeed in hurting you, I would kill them first and then I would kill you for being fucking stupid."

Erna smiled, "That sounds fair." Levi reached down to grab her ass and pull her in closer to him and he started licking and biting her slender, pale neck. When he had her moaning and her breathing came in irregular gasps, he stopped and grabbed her waist, pushing her a little away to look into her eyes, "Do you remember what I asked you the last time you were drunk in my office?"

"Right now I can't remember my name. Why do you do this to me?" She ground her pelvis against him, frustrated that he was always getting her worked up and then stopping.

"I asked you what you think about when you touch yourself and you refused to answer me." He pinched a nipple through the fabric of her shirt. "You were embarrassed."

Erna didn't remember but she wasn't at all surprised, "I'm still embarrassed… and I still won't tell you."

"Nothing you could say would surprise me or make me think that you're more fucked up than I already know you are." He pulled her face down in close to his and told her, "If you don't tell me, I'm going to do things that will make you wish you had."

The way he said it, she knew this wasn't the fun kind of threat. She decided to just get it out immediately knowing that every second that she delayed would make it worse, "Most of the time, I think about that time you were angry at me for beating up on Jean, when you kicked me around, made me clean the kitchen, and then made me lick the floor." Her heart was racing, she hated that she had to say it, she felt sure he was going to be disgusted with her forever now. She looked at a spot on the floor so that she wouldn't be able to see the revulsion she was sure would be in his eyes. Levi lightly trailed a hand up her back until it was in her hair and he tilted her head back and kissed her in a way that was soft and reassuring instead of hungry and insistent. Erna couldn't close her eyes, she was too surprised and confused. When he finally took his lips away from hers, there was only a very slight bemused tone to his voice when he said, "You really thought that would shock me."

"I did. It shocks me," she was happy, but confused as to how cool he could be about it, like it was nothing.

"I just told you that you interpret anger and the infliction of pain as love. So it makes sense. I'd be shocked if you told me you thought about something conventionally romantic." He put his hands around her waist and made her stand up in front of him. "You better hold onto that memory though, because you'll never be able to get me that angry again." He leaned back a little in his chair, "Get undressed."

Erna was growing so used to this request, she didn't hesitate at all to start removing her clothes, folding each article and placing it on the desk, at the same time pointing out, "I could easily beat Jean up again."

"Obviously, but that's not what I was angry about." He stood up from the chair and took the white cotton panties from her pile of clothes and threw them in the bin next to the desk. "I was angry about not being able to have you."

Feeling totally relieved now, Erna teased him, "I can always play hard to get."

"Can you?" He stood close to her, but just far enough that he wasn't touching her and he whispered in her ear in that evil tone that she loved, "Do you really think you could say 'no' to anything I wanted to do to you?"

She didn't have to think about the question for very long. "No," she was okay with feeling defeated on this one point.

"Good." He opened one of the larger bottom drawers on the desk and pulled out a bag, "Now this isn't cruel or sadistic, so you're not going to think it means I care about you, but gifts are how normal people express these things," now he was teasing her. She could tell from the words, not the tone. His tone remained that trademark deadpan.

Erna gladly took the bag, smiling and excited until she opened it. She reached in and pulled out just one of many pairs of colorful, sexy, silky, lacy panties and she twirled them around her finger. "This seems more like a gift for you than for me."

Levi shrugged, "Your gift is that I'm not going to throw out all of those white cotton rags that you call underwear."

Erna slipped into a pair of deep purple cheeky panties with black lace trim and found a matching bra in the bag, putting that on as well. She twisted around, trying to look at her own butt without the aid of a mirror and asked, "Better?"

"Much better. You actually almost look your age." He took another bag from the desk and she clapped her hands and jumped up and down in delight and reached for it. He pulled it back, "Except when you do shit like that," and held it out to her again when she put on a straight face. "Those are also more for me than for you. It's depressing seeing you wear a uniform on your days off."

Erna opened the bag, "Clothes and shoes…" She tried not to sound disappointed.

"What were you hoping for?"

"These are nice and I appreciate the thought very much, but I just don't care much about what I wear. I was hoping for something useful, like a new knife. OR something you could hurt me or tie me up with." She smiled mischievously.

Levi tried to act annoyed, "Go put your new things away and go to bed."

Erna pouted, "You're still not going to punish me?"

"Not in a way you'll like. You wasted too much time making me explain why I love you and making me answer stupid questions. Honestly, you're a piece of work. If you shut up more, I would have more time to torture you and fuck you like the insatiable little whore you are." He pointed to the door that separated the office from the rest of the apartment and slapped her ass hard, "Go."

Erna gave a little squeal and went to the door, stepping through before turning around and saying "You looove me," in a childish sing-song voice and closing the door just before he could throw a paperweight at her.


	11. Admiration

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Springles. Jearmin. Fluff. Smut.

Connie set his stuff down in a big pile in a corner of Sasha's room. He was a little drunk and a lot tired and he figured Sasha wouldn't mind if he put his stuff away tomorrow after training. He looked around the room and could tell that, as he had expected, Sasha wasn't exactly a clean freak. It was strange being in her room. They were best friends and spent a lot of time together during the day, but they always hung out in public common areas, never in each other's rooms.

A minute or two later, Sasha arrived with a cot from the supply depot and she leaned it against the wall. "I got it, but really Connie, you don't need to use it. The bed's big enough, I don't mind sharing."

Connie frowned, "I don't think that's a good idea." He took the cot and unfolded it.

"But why not?"

Connie loved her, but she really could be totally oblivious. Maybe it was because he was a little drunk, maybe it was because he'd had enough of it, or maybe he was afraid that if he didn't remind her that he was in fact a man she was going to make him participate in a pillow fight and then braid her hair like they were having a fucking slumber party, but for any one of these reasons he finally told her, "Because I'm a guy, Sasha. And you're hot… I mean, I find you really attractive anyway. And I'm not saying I can't be friends with you, but come on, you've got to realize that the idea of sharing a bed with you would make me horny." He finished unfolding the cot which was done a little roughly in his frustration, sat down, and shifted his gaze to her face, which was goddamn adorably dumbfounded. Her cute lips were in the shape of a little 'o'. He looked away from her, bringing a hand to the back of his neck and blushing, "Aw come on, don't make me feel like an idiot. I know we're just friends, but I'm not a corpse."

"Connie… I… I feel the same way…"

Now it was Connie's turn to look surprised. Sasha blushed a little and went on, "I just thought you only saw me as a friend."

Connie felt equal parts joy and rage. Joy for obvious reasons. Rage at himself for being too much of a pussy to kiss her all these years. He didn't want to waste any more time. He stood up and put his hands around her waist, giving her a gentle push backwards so she would sit on the bed. With the height difference it would be near impossible to do anything standing. He pushed her legs apart with his knee and stood between them, cradling her head in his hands and pulling her into the most passionate, loving kiss. Parting her lips, exploring her mouth, he never wanted to come up for air. They kissed deeply, but slowly, until Connie pulled his face away to take a good look at the girl he loved. He wasn't in a rush to make up for lost time now, he felt like he could just kiss her forever and be content. Sasha looked so stunned that he was worried for a second that he had just totally fucked up and maybe they weren't as much on the same page as he thought, but before he could worry too much, she put her arms around his neck and pulled him in for another kiss, but this one was urgent and hungry. He kissed her back roughly and brought his hands up to knead her breasts through her shirt, making her moan into his lips. It made him want to growl, to take all of his pent up frustration, unexpressed love, and anger at his inaction, and fuck her like a crazed animal. He moved down to lick and suck on her neck as he pulled at her shirt, trying to unbutton it as fast as possible.

Sasha moaned regretfully, "I loved you too much to tell you."

He growled into her neck, "Same." He gave up with the buttons and ripped her shirt open. Too impatient to even try fumbling with her bra, he just pushed it up and over her tits so he could get at them quickly. He took one in his mouth while kneading the other with his hand. He felt her nipple harden in his mouth and he gave the other one a light pinch and told her "I love your tits," before greedily sucking on the other breast.

She moaned and arched her back, and pulled his head closer, "I love your bald head." He licked around her areola, not offended enough to stop, but enough to tell her, "I'm not bald, I shave my head like every three days."

She grabbed at the hem of his shirt and pulled it over his head and giggled, "Whatever. I think it's hot." She wrapped her legs around him and he pressed the bulge in his pants against her. He felt like a teenager, so sick in love and horny and rushing too much to do anything smoothly. He leaned into her and she lay back on the bed, legs still hanging over the edge. He kneeled down and pulled her boots off, then her socks, then her pants.

He got onto his knees and pushed her legs apart, bringing his face to the crotch of her panties and giving her a long, slow lick, making her shout and moan, "Oh my god, Connie!"

He thought about telling her to try to be quiet for a split second before deciding he didn't care who heard. He wanted her to scream his name as loud as she wanted. He pulled her panties to the side and gazed lovingly at her beautiful pink pussy before licking it and rubbing his nose against her clit. He weaved his tongue between her folds, sucked on her lips, made quick flicking motions with his tongue, and repeated anything that made her scream. He had eaten plenty of pussy before and considered himself to be pretty good at it, but he had never been so attentive or so hungry, it had always just been more a gesture of courtesy. For the first time, with Sasha, he genuinely cared more about his partner's climax than his own.

Soon Sasha was clutching his head, and moaning incoherently, "OhmygodOhmygodOhmygod!" When she came, she fell back on the bed panting for air. He gave her a few more broad licks with his tongue, making her shudder. He stood up and looked down at her, pretty pleased with himself when he saw the look of ecstasy still on her face. He teased her, his voice dripping with well-deserved smugness, asking, "You okay?" She didn't answer… or open her eyes… she was sleeping. Connie gave her a nudge in the right direction and, still asleep, she moved herself until she was comfortable with her head on the pillow. He took off his pants and got in bed next to her, pulling the covers over both of them and kissing her forehead, "I love you, Potato Girl."

* * *

Jean lay on his back, eyes open, staring at the dark ceiling from his cot near Armin's bed. Loud voices of new trainees echoed down the halls outside. "When will they shut up?"

"If it will help you sleep, you can take the bed and I'll take the cot." Armin offered.

Jean huffed, "Don't be ridiculous, it's your room. You shouldn't have to give up the bed in your own room."

Armin softly pointed out, "It's your room too now."

There was a crash outside, someone stumbling into a piece of furniture or something. Jean made a frustrated groaning sound and stood up, telling Armin, "Move over," and getting into the bed next to him.

Armin was pressed between Jean and the wall now and stammered, "Um… Oh – okay… If you're sure…"

"Those cots are uncomfortable as all hell and smell like mold; I'm not making you sleep in one." There were more crashing sounds and laughter outside. "Fucking rookies…"

"Just try to ignore it and relax. It'll be easier to fall asleep if you don't let yourself get angry."

Jean knew, of course, that he was right. It was just so damn hard to not get angry. He tried to breathe deeply and close his eyes. "How are you so smart and yet still friends with that stupid Jaeger?"

"Talking about him isn't going to help you relax."

"You're right. I'm sorry." Jean turned to look at Armin, "It just doesn't make any sense to me, but I'll drop it."

"Why doesn't it make any sense?"

"Because…" It was hard for Jean to say anything that wasn't abrasive, he wasn't well-practiced in it. "… You're so kind… and smart…"  _and beautiful,_  he added inside his head. "And he's so hot-headed and dumb and…"

"Well-meaning and earnest, but stubborn and difficult?" Armin cut him off, adding quietly, "You two are a lot alike. I think that's why you guys butt heads a lot… and I think that's why you and I get along so well."

"Tch…" Jean hated being compared to that shithead.

"Don't be mad." Armin sounded and looked calm and rational, not apologetic.  _He shouldn't be sorry_ , Jean thought,  _He's right as usual._  Jean wished he could be more like Armin, but he didn't have the kind of strength that it took to be patient. He had grown to admire and respect Armin so much, to the point where for a while now it had been starting to feel like he had a crush. The more he admired Armin's brain and way of being, the more he also admired his face and his body; his beautiful deep blue eyes, the curve of his neck, his slender body that was much stronger than anyone would expect, even the way Armin smelled gave him a rush whenever he was close enough. He was sure that if he told Armin about it he would explain something about brain chemicals and pheromones, and Jean loved that too. He thought he would give anything to be with him, but he couldn't be sure how Armin felt and he knew that a rejection from the blonde would destroy him, so he settled for friendship.

"You don't have to press yourself against the wall like that. You act like I'm going to bite you or something. Just lay however is comfortable."

"It's okay… I'm fine," Armin said, but he didn't look fine. He looked and sounded nervous. It irritated Jean a little, made him feel like Armin saw him as some kind of monster. He quickly reached for Armin's waist and pulled him closer, so that their faces were only inches apart, "See? I don't bite." Now Armin looked truly terrified and Jean quickly figured out why when he felt what was definitely not Armin's hand poking his stomach. As the realization crept over Jean's face, Armin blushed and he could tell he was about to stammer out an apology, but he didn't want to hear it, didn't want him to be sorry, so he closed his eyes and kissed him before any apology could escape his soft, perfect lips. He didn't feel any resistance, but when he took his lips away and opened his eyes, Armin looked completely stunned and Jean felt the sting of rejection. He turned away and started to get up to get out of bed, saying, "I'm sorry – I," but Armin put an arm around him and gently, easily pulled him back. "No, it's okay, just stay," Armin pleaded softly. Jean was laying facing away from him now and Armin nuzzled his face against the back of Jean's neck, reassuring him further, "It was nice… I liked it… So just go to sleep."

Jean had never pictured himself being the little spoon, but it helped him to relax and fall asleep, feeling loved and cared for in Armin's arms and also being able to rest easy knowing that Armin wouldn't be able to feel his embarrassingly throbbing hard cock pitching a tent in his pajama pants.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have this idea that Connie would be really good, giving, & game in bed. Maybe because he's short? I think short guys try harder. That is my impression. Do not wonder about how I know.


	12. La Petite Mort

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This first section starts off fun and then I don't know what comes over me. You'll see.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warning for a very, very slight, teeny-tiny hint of non-con at the end of this chapter. I mean, I think if nothing has been a trigger for you in this story thus far, then it shouldn't be a problem, but I'll exercise caution here because what the fuck do I know?

Erna woke up, alone and in a comfortable bed. She opened her eyes and felt a jolt of that panic upon awaking that is sometimes common when the brain doesn't immediately recognize its surroundings as safe and familiar, but then she remembered where she was and nuzzled her face back into Levi's pillow. It smelled like his hair and she let out a sweet sigh. Feeling relaxed and well-rested, she opened her eyes again, this time looking at the window, at the bright sunlight filtering through. This time the jolt of panic she felt was rational and not instinctual, "Fuck me! What time is it?!"

Erna flew to the dresser, grabbing for her clothes and getting dressed as quickly as possible. She heard Levi's voice from the washroom, stating matter-of-factly, "You're awake."

"I'm going to miss breakfast! Why didn't you wake me up?" Erna struggled with the buttons of a shirt. The faster she tried to get dressed, the longer it always took.

"I didn't want to listen to your complaining. You whine too much when I wake you up."

Erna got tangled in a harness strap and nearly fell. "I wouldn't whine so much," she tugged at the strap, grunting, "if you would wake me up like a normal person," she tugged again, "instead of teasing me with your fingers or shaking me awake from what is obviously a really good sex dream!" She got her harness fixed, buckled, and straight, pulled her boots on and angrily stomped to the open washroom door to tell him that he was a goddamn sociopath, but she stopped at the door frame and her jaw dropped.

Levi stood in front of the mirror over the sink, a towel around his waist. He had already showered. His wet hair was tied into a top knot, out of the way as he shaved the sides of his undercut with a straight razor. He didn't turn around, but he could see her reaction in the mirror. "You look truly fascinated. Did you think my hair just did this on its own?"

"I… You…" Erna stammered and then let out a short, frustrated scream, stamped her foot and balled her hands into fists, "You are stupidly hot! I can't stand you!"

"Tch." He tried to act annoyed, "See? Always complaining." Erna elbowed him out of the way of the sink, making him almost cut the back of his neck with the razor, and splashed cold water on her face. Levi turned serious and as she reached for a towel he grabbed her wrist, twisting it behind her back and bringing the razor to her throat in one swift motion. He looked at her face in the mirror, loving the way she looked in the rare moments where she was actually afraid of him. Nothing was more alluring to him than when he could make her eyes wide with terror and watch her chest rise and fall as she breathed deeply and tried not to scream. She stood still as a statue. He leaned down and whispered in her ear, "Don't be so impulsive," as he traced her jawline with the razor, "You almost made me cut myself."

Levi knew that she could disarm him and put him down if she wanted to, that's what made the game fun. He knew she wanted that adrenaline rush, to let him scare her, and let him push the boundaries of her trust. He lightly pressed the blade against her skin and sucked on her earlobe, making her whimper and moan. He twisted her wrist a little harder and pressed his erection against her, keeping the razor still and pushing her into it hard enough to make her breath hitch, but not hard enough to break the skin of her deliciously vulnerable neck. She leaned back into him and moaned like an eager little slut. He considered taking her roughly from behind, making her clutch the sink, watching her face in the mirror as he fucked her… but he could wait. He let go of her wrist and took the razor away, continuing where he left off with his hair and reminding her, "You're going to be late." She looked, for a second, like her legs would give out. A noise came out of her that started as a whimper, turned into a moan, and finished as a primal sound of frustration. He smirked to himself as she turned around and stormed off.

* * *

Erna went through the door separating Levi's office from the apartment, trying to ignore the slight throbbing feeling between her legs. It was too late in the morning and there would be too many people around for her to go out the apartment door. Even though Levi didn't care if anyone knew, Erna liked to protect the little privacy she had. Leaving from the office would be less obvious. But aside from being able to come up with this small piece of strategy, she felt utterly senseless. Her thoughts only came in images. Her body still pumped with adrenaline and lust. She pressed her forehead against the cool wood of the door to the corridor and breathed. "Baka…" she murmured. She turned and looked at a clock that sat atop a shelf on the other wall. There was no time to collect herself, she opened the door and took off running to the dining hall.

It was still more crowded than she was used to. Too many new faces. She found her squad and sat down hurriedly at the end of the table next to Krista who gently pushed a cup of coffee over the tabletop to her. While everyone else was still busy talking about how annoying the adjustments for the new recruits were, Krista leaned over and whispered, "I told them you overslept. Otherwise they would think you spent the night with a trainee and you'd never hear the end of it."

Erna looked down at the mug; the coffee was black, the way she liked. She wanted to hug the girl. She whispered back, "You're so sweet. Thank you."

"I just want everybody to be happy." Krista flashed her one of her big-eyed smiles that made it seem like light was shining down from heaven and angels were singing.  _How does she do that?_

Erna drank her coffee which was only lukewarm, so it must have been waiting for her for a while. Her mind was still cloudy from before. She fixed her eyes on the mug, but she was seeing Levi, naked, hurting her, fucking her, both at the same time, in a myriad of different ways. She got lost in thought for a while.

Connie eventually interrupted her thinking, "Erna, you lightweight, how did you get hung over and oversleep when none of us even got a decent buzz?"

Erna paused for a second, her brain not being in the mode it needed to be in order to make sentences. Then she deflected with flattery, "I just can't handle my booze like you guys can."

Sasha pointed out, "You seemed fine when you left last night."

Erna deflected again, "What about you guys? How was your slumber party?" Neither Sasha nor Connie answered, but they both blushed.

Just as everyone noticed, came to the same conclusion, and were about to start grilling them for details, Levi stepped in and unintentionally saved the pair. "Oi, brats. Get your gear. We're going out on reconnaissance. It's too loud around here lately." Everyone paused, torn between following the order or delaying it for a moment and teasing Sasha and Connie until Levi added, "Now." They scattered.

When everyone was gone, Erna gave him a dirty look, "You could have told me." Now she would have to run to get her 3DMG from his room, which was much farther than everyone else's and make it outside to get her horse, get ready, and keep up with everyone else.

As she got up from her chair and went to walk past him, he grabbed her upper arm, stopping her at his side and saying only just loudly enough for her to hear, "When did you want me tell you? When you were incessantly whining at me for not waking you up? When you were writhing against me and moaning with my razor to your throat? Or when you threw a tantrum and stormed off like a petulant brat?" She turned to face him, her face flushed and her heart beat faster at his words. She couldn't help getting excited whenever his voice was dripping with evil and contempt. She liked when he sounded like he wanted to hurt and humiliate her and he knew it. She felt the wetness return between her legs. She felt like she wanted to attack him, bite him, scratch him, impale herself on his cock. She wanted to do everything and she wanted it to be fast and rough and animalistic. Her eyes glazed over and her mouth went dry. He gave her arm a little shake, "I have a lot to punish you for later. For now,  _try_  to focus and not get yourself killed." Erna shook her head, trying to literally shake the images from her mind. Levi let go of her arm, telling her, "Go. Don't keep me waiting."

...

* * *

Erna ran out to where the rest of Levi's and Hange's squads were waiting, out of breath and faster, she knew, than Levi expected. When she had gotten to his room and put her 3DMG together, she'd opened his window and jumped out. Shooting a hook into the outer part of the windowsill, she had rappelled down, cutting the time it would take her to get out and meet up with them by half. Still, she was late. Everyone was already on their horses and waiting. Levi attempted to embarrass her, "What took you so long?"

Erna took her saddle off her hip and rested it on the ground, bringing her fingers to her lips in a long, loud whistle. She smiled, "I had to get carrots." She took a carrot from her pocket and broke it in half, casually holding a broken piece out in the flat of her palm, not even turning her head as her horse galloped up behind her, slid to a stop, and devoured the offering, nearly taking Erna's fingers with it. She equipped Raven with her saddle, bridle, and signal flares quickly and bribed her into coming down to her knees with the other half of the carrot and she mounted up. "Sorry! I'm ready." She got into formation and they left the headquarters, going out over the drawbridge into the open, and fanning out.

Before pulling her horse away, Erna yelled to the person closest to her, "Mikasa, did they say where we're going?"

"We're searching out a new route… They didn't say what for… Just south for now…" Mikasa replied calmly, and Erna drifted away until she was a speck in the distance.

For a while, Erna remained hyper-vigilant, tense and ready. After a few miles of riding at a fast, but steady pace, keeping the riders on all sides just close enough to be seen over the landscape and not seeing any flares go up, she started to relax. The change of scenery was lovely. She thought it was nice to get away from the now cramped and crowded headquarters. Even though the chance of dying out here was much higher, it felt more quiet and peaceful than being inside headquarters where everything was relatively very safe. She let her mind go blank for a while, feeling all of the stress from the morning pouring out of her. So many feelings came with being human and they were mentally taxing for her. She had missed being in the way of danger, out on missions where everything was simple, adrenaline leaving no room for anxieties and keeping her mind blank and ready to react quickly. After covering about nine more miles, she heard a pop and a hiss to her right and saw both a red and then a black flare off in the distance. She didn't feel any apprehension. She only had two thoughts, " _Break formation"_ and " _Neutralize threat."_ Nothing else ran through her head as she steered Raven towards the source of the flares.

Because of their size, Erna saw the titans long before she could see who sent up the flares. One was smaller and running after two riders who were chasing another, larger titan that was running eastward. Erna signaled to the two riders to take care of the titan behind them, that she would get the variant. She didn't notice details. She took in what was relevant  _Perpendicular course, about 55mph, Target…_ she scanned the horizon, trying to see what the variant was locked on, what it was running towards in lieu of attacking the closest humans…  _undetermined._  In her peripheral vision she saw the other two riders working together to easily hamstring and kill the smaller titan.

Erna brought her feet up, stood on the saddle, jumped, and shot her grapple hooks into the far ankle of the larger titan, reeling herself in, flying dangerously low to the ground, and slashing the tendons behind both ankles, releasing the hooks as the titan fell forwards away from her. Before it was even flat on the ground, she shot a hook into its back, reeled in, released and fell in a graceful arc, using gravity and momentum to give her enough weight to make a deep slash through the nape of the neck. It was over in three seconds. Steam began to surround her in an artificial fog and she jumped down, walking away as she sheathed her blades. Once out of the titan steam, she whistled. While she waited, she took another carrot from inside her jacket. Connie and Sasha reached her as she waited for her horse. When Sasha saw who it was, she shouted, "Doll-Face!"

Erna just smiled. She felt serene out here working like this, teasing didn't bother her the way it did at headquarters. They heard a pop and a hiss and saw a green signal flare.  _Six miles south,_ Erna thought. She whistled again, breaking the carrot in half, "You guys go ahead, I'll catch up."

"Are you sure?" Connie asked.

"Raven always runs off to graze the second I'm off, but she comes back eventually. Don't wait for me, I'll be fine."

"You're creepiest when you're calm like this, you know?" Sasha wasn't teasing her so much as making an accurate observation.

Erna shrugged, "I like it out here. This makes sense to me."

"You are the weirdest." Connie remarked and he and Sasha rode away towards the signal flare, Sasha yelling over her shoulder, "Be careful, Doll-Face!"

Erna stretched. She watched the clouds. She whistled again, certain that Raven was being lazy and grazing somewhere out of sight.  _Stupid horse._  She took a bite of the carrot. The sun felt warmer and the air seemed clearer, even though she was quite sure it was the same sun and air as was near headquarters. She took another bite. Everything felt better when she was out in the open, outside the walls, outside headquarters, it was like all concern and memory of her life went away. Any pull her ego had over her disappeared. There were no decisions, no frustrations, no thoughts of anything. The outside world in all its danger was like her drug or like some kind of purgatory where there were no feelings of agony or ecstasy, just the calmness of feeling nothing. She listened to the birds and let her mind be a blank space for minutes before she saw a titan in the distance running towards her, but then the only thought that formed was,  _Get off the ground._

For now, she stood where she was, whistling again,  _Please be okay, you stupid horse._  She dropped the carrot, estimated the titan's speed, and sprinted in the direction where she had last left Raven. Running was better than standing. Soon, she saw her horse galloping towards her, but not fast enough, and with another titan behind her, also running towards Erna.

_Save the horse, can't get out without her._  Erna dug her feet into the ground, pushing off to run in a lateral direction, so the titan would change course and not trample over her horse to get to her, but this put her closer to the first titan.  _Get off the ground._ She could feel the earth shaking. She took out two new blades and then stood, every muscle tensed and waiting. When the closer titan leaned down and made a grab for her, she shot a hook just behind its wrist and reeled herself in enough to get well away from the ground, detached the hook, shot the other one into its shoulder, reeled herself up, released. The titan tried to grab at the line, but it was already released and reeling back to her. She stabbed a blade into the side of the titan's neck, just to hold herself there, not killing it yet.  _Wait. Don't go to the ground. Wait._

She waited for the other titan to get closer as the one she was standing on thrashed, clumsily trying to reach for her. When the other titan was close enough, she took a clean slice from the nape of the neck of her ride. As it started to fall forward, she jumped and shot her hooks into the next one. This was easier, since she was already up in the air, she could go straight to the shoulder, release, fall, and make her cut in a little less than a full second. When it was done, she shot back to the first titan that was still falling, reeled herself down with it, released and jumped, tucking and rolling against the ground.  _Look._ She swiveled her head all around. There weren't any titans visible, but she could hear the sound of one coming from the same direction as the others.

If she could hear it, it was too close _. Get the horse._

She ran to Raven who was a little ways away, around about where she had dropped the carrot, but the carrot was gone now. The whites of her eyes were showing, which was rare for a Survey Corps horse, and she was lathered in sweat – also rare. There was a small gash on her shoulder and a thin rivulet of blood dripping down her leg.

Erna asked, "What in the hell happened to you?" If horses could talk, Raven would have explained something about finding the best grass around the edges of small forests, an encounter with a bear, and how maybe it wasn't best to completely breed the fear out of horses since their best defense was running away in fear, but horses can't talk and so Erna got no answer.

Erna couldn't let herself feel concerned. No matter how the horse was hurt, she needed her to run. She grabbed a chunk of Raven's mane and vaulted up to the saddle. The horse took off like a shot. Erna searched the sky for the remnants of the green signal flare, fading in the wind, but still visible, and she steered for it, leaning forward and murmuring into Raven's ear the whole way to calm her, "Run, you evil thing. Your laziness is going to kill us both. Soft and steady, but only run. Run and keep running even if your lungs burst." Her words were harsh, but her tone was affectionate, steady, and comforting.

 

* * *

Erna followed the spot she had seen the green smoke until she saw the other horses, they were stopped now though, at the edge of an abandoned town. Erna let Raven slow to a trot and she made a running dismount when they got closer, thanking the horse for getting them to safety despite her wounded shoulder. About half of the other riders were dismounted too. Apparently they had been there for a bit. A little further away, Hange and Levi argued over a map that Hange held out. No one seemed to know what they were arguing over. They were only fifteen or twenty miles from headquarters, so they couldn't be lost.

Hange threw her hands up in frustration, pushed the map into Levi's hands, and turned in Armin's direction, shouting, "Armin, talk sense to him, I can't deal with this!" As Armin nervously walked over, Levi looked up, scanning the group, and saw Erna. He walked past Armin, handing him the map but ignoring him and going straight for Erna. Armin looked relieved to be ignored in this one instance.

"What happened to you?"

Was his voice tinged with concern or was that quiet anger or were those the same thing? She couldn't tell. "Nothing. My horse needs first aid and water."

Levi looked at the cut on the horse's shoulder. "Take a spare horse. Leave it."

There weren't many things that Erna was attached to in this world. She didn't have any personal possessions that she cared about, nothing that was irreplaceable or sentimental. The only thing she really cared much about was Levi, but her horse, as mean and dangerous as she was, came in a very close second. "I… am not… leaving… my horse," she said very slowly and severely.

Levi sighed. "Hange, you're good with beasts. Can this one make it?" He shouted over to Hange who was now going over the map with Armin.

Hange came over and Erna showed her the gash. Erna moved to Raven's head and spoke to her quietly and fed her the last carrot she had in small pieces to distract her while Hange examined her. After some scrutiny, Hange decided, "The cut's not so deep. It won't bleed out. But we can't take it for the rest of the mission."

"You're confident it will survive from here back to headquarters?" Levi asked.

"Of course, but –," Hange started, but Levi cut her off. "We're at a stalemate anyway. We'll try another day."

Hange sighed, not happy, but unwilling to argue anymore. "Oh well, we made a good distance anyway." Then she perked up, "Did you run into any titans?" she asked Erna.

"Oh, um," Erna was always a little thrown off by how enthusiastic Hange got about titans. "I took down a variant, then I was waiting for my horse and I had to kill two more. I heard a third one, but I lost it."

Levi sounded unmistakably angry, "Why didn't you send up a signal flare?"

Erna blinked, surprised at the question, she thought the answer was obvious. "I didn't have my horse... The flares are with the horse," she pointed at the pack attached near the saddle. He brought his palm to his forehead.

"Armin!" Hange shouted. Armin hurried over and she snatched the map from him. She held it out and said, "Erna, do me a favor and mark where you saw the titans."

Erna didn't even try to look at the map. Map-reading was not a skill she possessed. "So, um…" She pointed in the direction she had come from, "about four or five miles that way. The variant was heading east, but I didn't see where it came from or what it was running for. The others…" she closed her eyes. She had to think about it. "One approached from the north, the other from northeast and the one I heard but didn't see was also coming from northeast. Maybe there were more coming from that direction; I didn't stay to see."

Hange gave the map back to Armin who got a red pencil from his jacket pocket and marked x's on it. Her eyes lit up, "What did they look like?!"

Erna shrugged, "I didn't notice."

Hange threw her hands up and yelled, "What do you mean you didn't notice!?"

Erna couldn't help responding with a yell. All this discussion had ruined her calm, "Their individual faces and personalities aren't something I take in as information that is relevant to the situation! I can tell you what the napes of their necks looked like: the same! They all look the same!"

Levi made a slight smile. Hange looked horrified and then muttered softly as though she were hurt by the words, "I can't believe I tried to get you on my squad."

Krista walked over, leading another horse, and she handed the reins to Erna before wrapping her in a tight, tearful hug. "I'm so glad you're okay!"

The sudden affection was very jarring for Erna. She stood stiffly, not sure how to react. Then she tried to wriggle out of the hug, "Of course I'm okay! Let go of me!"

Armin reassured Erna, "It's alright, she just does this. Krista's very empathetic." Erna extracted herself from Krista's arms, Armin folded up the map and gave it back to Hange, and Levi gave the order for everyone to mount up. Erna put her forehead against Raven's, and was about to thank her again when the horse head-butted her and pushed her away with her nose. "You evil bitch," Erna rubbed her head, "Ow… I wouldn't want you any other way…" She mounted the fresh horse, which was smaller – small enough for her to get on from the ground – and led Raven behind her as they got back into formation and headed back for headquarters.

* * *

Levi and Hange stood in Erwin's office. The clean-cut blonde man furrowed his eyebrows. "So you couldn't find a safe route?"

"Well we made it to the first checkpoint I had planned…" Hange brought her hand to the back of her neck. "But we disagreed about where to go from there."

"What changed?" Erwin asked.

"Hange wanted to alter the route so she could check out a small, abandoned township twenty miles to the east of the first checkpoint."

"I just think it might be a better place to set up operations. More buildings to maneuver off of would make things safer, wouldn't they? And everyone would have more space –," Hange was cut off by Erwin before she could keep listing reasons.

"I approved your original proposal to use the abandoned isolation hospital in Ralsog … I appreciate your concern for safety, but a small township isn't going to have any buildings with deep basements."

Hange gave up her argument, "… Yes, Erwin, I'm sorry."

"Nothing goes forward until you can prove that you can actually make it there. If you can find a relatively safe route there and back, then we'll talk about details." Erwin rubbed his temples. "Why did you stop?"

"The formation was broken by titans. A horse was injured." Levi stated in his deadpan, matter-of-fact tone.

"We have more horses. They're expendable." Erwin's voice was cold.

"To be clearer, Raban's horse was injured. She refused to go on without it," Levi replied.

"… Hange, you're dismissed…"

...

* * *

Erna had skipped dinner to make sure the veterinary staff took good care of Raven. It was long after dark when she finally left the stable, took a hot shower, and collapsed on the bed naked and exhausted. She was only mildly curious at the fact that Levi wasn't there. He was probably in the office. She wondered if she should go check, but decided she was too tired and the bed was too soft.

She heard the door to the first room open before she could drift off to sleep. She recognized the sound of Levi's boots hitting the floor, the bedroom door opening, and the rustling sound of him getting undressed. She thought that he would be as tired as she was and just fall into bed. She didn't open her eyes until she felt his hands grab her hips and roughly pull her to the edge of the bed. His eyes had a feral and hungry look. He spread her legs and lined his cock up with her entrance, but she clamped her thighs around his waist, holding him still so that he couldn't move any further, "Wait, Levi, I'm not…"

Levi ignored her pleading and leaned over her, grabbing her wrists and pinning them to the bed. He bit down on the curve where her shoulder met her neck, hard. She cried out and lost the grip she had with her thighs for only a second, but that was all he needed. He let go of her wrists and grabbed her thighs, roughly pulling them apart and holding them as he thrust inside of her.

"Ha! … Levi!" Erna gasped in pain. There was no foreplay and she wasn't wet enough, but after a few more rough thrusts the lubrication came and the pain turned into pleasure. He didn't say anything, he only grunted like an animal. When she relaxed her thighs and moaned, he let go of her legs and leaned down to suck on her neck, bruising her with his mouth. She didn't care about the marks it would leave, his feral-ness was contagious. She gasped and moaned and tried to buck her hips to meet his thrusts, just as impatient as he was.

Levi stopped her and pulled out. Before she even had a chance to whine and beg him not to tease her, he got onto the bed, turning her over onto her stomach and pulling her up by her waist so that she was bent over on her hands and knees. He grabbed her hips and plunged roughly inside her again, getting much deeper than before. Erna cried out and grunted, feeling like she didn't have any more room for him inside her. He pounded into her without any restraint, her arms couldn't support her and she fell into the soft, clean sheets, her face turned to the side. He pushed into her, hooking an arm around her waist to hold her hips up, he reached forward with one hand and pressed her face down against the bed. His thumb pressed into her cheek, too close to her mouth, she bit down on it hard. There was no thought of hurting him, it was just something she was driven to do instinctually. He didn't try to pull his hand away, he let her clamp her teeth on his thumb and he grunted, plowing into her harder and harder until she felt his cock twitch inside her. He pulled out, ripped his thumb from her teeth, and pulled her up by her hair, twisting her around and forcing her mouth down onto his cock, grinding his pelvis against her nose and burying himself in her throat as he came.

When he was completely drained, he let go of her head and she popped up. He put his arm around her shoulders and pushed her down to lie on her back. He lay on his side, next to her, and held her tightly as he caught his breath in ragged gasps. When Erna's capacity for thought returned, she got out between breaths, "What… the fuck… was that?"

He pulled her closer and, back to normal, stated in his emotionless voice, "I thought you were dead."

She didn't understand. "I'm obviously not."

"Idiot girl… When you broke formation... No one knew where you were for nearly an hour."

She was offended, she felt he underestimated her. "I was doing my job. I'm not reckless. Don't worry about me out there."

"If it appears that you're dead, I'm going to go ahead and worry about you or mourn you, whatever the situation dictates."

Erna didn't like the thought of it. Not the being dead part, that was something she was used to thinking about, but she didn't like the thought of him mourning over her or worrying about her, or worst of all, getting killed because of her. "… Don't try to save me."

"Stupid girl, I already told you I wouldn't. How I feel about you doesn't effect my decisions." He twirled one of her curls around a finger, "I wouldn't send anyone after you if you didn't come back. If there were something you couldn't deal with then it would be a suicide mission for anyone else."

That made her feel better. She teased him, "I'm going to outlive you, old man."

"I'm counting on it. Go to sleep."


	13. Dust

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I wanted some Krista love. I felt bad for not letting her have a Ymir. When I started this AU my only rules were that I wouldn't use anyone who, according to the manga, wouldn't be in the Survey Corps this far in the future, but I also wouldn't reference anything that happened in the manga. *waves fingers* It's all as if none of it ever happened. So, ya know, Erwin has both of his arms, Krista is just plain old Krista, not Historia Reiss, etc.
> 
> Anyway, that is why there is no Reiner, Bertholdt, Ymir, or Mike. The first three I don't really miss. But Mike… I don't know if I want my characters to live in a world without Mike. Fuck, man, I mean, I don't even want to live in a world without Mike. And it's my AU with my arbitrarily imposed rules, so I may throw him in there. Though I will need to come up with some explanation as to where he's been this whole time. So maybe that happens in this chapter! Who knows? I certainly don't.

Erna stood outside Krista's door, leaned against the wall, waiting for what felt like an hour, but given the distortion of time when one is feeling impatient, it was probably five minutes. She sighed to herself, blew a curl away from her eyes. Krista finally opened the door, surprised to see her there, but happy as always.

"Good morning," she said sweetly.

"Morning… I thought I would walk with you to breakfast… thank you for covering for me."

"That's sweet of you, but no thanks necessary. I don't mind." Krista started to close the door behind her, stepping out into the corridor.

"Wait… um, actually…" Erna stammered. This was very hard for her. She folded the collar of her jacket down, exposing a dark hickey on the side of her neck, "I had another motive. Do you have a scarf or something I can borrow?" Krista just smiled and opened the door, following Erna back into the room. When Krista closed the door, Erna apologized, "You don't have to cover for me or help me if it's any trouble. I don't want to put you out or make things awkward for you," by which she meant  _I don't want to owe you anything._

"Not at all… I don't have any scarves… Hold on…" She opened a dresser drawer. Erna sat in a chair in front of a vanity table. She tilted her head to look at the bruise in the mirror.  _Nope._  There was no way it was not noticeable.

Krista took out a shirt and held it up. It was a white turtleneck with three-quarter length sleeves. Erna looked at the shirt, then at Krista, "Thanks, but you're a little smaller than me. I don't want to stretch it out. It's okay, I can try to hide it with my collar."

"You won't stretch it out, just take it, don't worry about returning it."

Erna took the shirt from Krista, in awe of her generosity, "You're not going to ask me how I got the hickey?"

"You can tell me if you want to, but I don't need to know."

Erna took off her jacket and unbuttoned her shirt.  _And_ I'm  _the one who gets picked on for being strange…_ she thought. She took off her shirt, hung it on the chair, and pulled the turtleneck over her head.

Krista clapped her hands, "You look beautiful!"

_I could give a fuck about beautiful…_ Erna thought as she checked herself in the mirror.  _Does it cover the bruise?_  It did. However, it was tight and showed a thin line of her midriff. "You don't think this is too obvious?"

"It's better than nothing, right?"

"It's surreal how sweet you are. Thank you." Erna put her jacket back on. Krista smiled and hugged her tightly. Erna paused, awkwardly, waiting for the hug to be over, "You're not going to cry, are you?"

Krista released her. "No… Why would I?"

"No reason." Erna offered her arm in mock gallant chivalry, "My lady, shall we?"

Krista giggled and took Erna's arm.

* * *

Krista and Erna got to the kitchen first, getting food and coffee, and going out to the dining hall.

After sitting down, Erna put her head in her hands and lazily blew the steam away from her coffee. Krista observed her, then said with her voice full of sweet concern, "You look so tired. How did you sleep?"

"In a bed," Erna replied, being a cranky smartass. Then she remembered who she was talking to. She didn't turn to look at Krista, knowing that if she did the look on her face would make Erna feel like she had just kicked an adorable kitten. "I'm sorry. I'm just being defensive. I felt like you were trying to figure out where I'm sleeping, but you already said you don't care."

"I  _do_ care. I just don't need you to tell me if you don't want to. There's a difference." Krista took Erna's hand and gave it a squeeze.

Erna took her hand back, "You are so sweet that it makes me feel bad. You make me feel like a hideous, fire-breathing monster. You show me a lot more kindness than I deserve, you know?"

Krista just smiled, "You don't mean that."

Erna changed the subject to answer Krista's earlier question, "I woke up too early. I was worried about Raven, even though I shouldn't be because she's fine. And… I don't know… I was thinking about what would happen to you guys if I weren't here." She didn't know why she was being so open. It was strange for her to hear the slight sadness in her own voice. She didn't think she felt sad. Just anxious and worried about things she couldn't control. She was experiencing some existential anxiety, which seemed stupid to her.  _Nothing is less useful than worrying about what will happen to the living after you're dead._

Krista seemed to seriously think about this for a moment. "Sasha would be sad to not have someone to pick on anymore."

"… Did you just make a joke?"

Krista smiled.

Erna's face turned serious and annoyed, "I don't get you." She sipped at her coffee.

Mikasa came and sat down with them and Erna asked her right away, "Mikasa, do you have any scarves other than that one?"

"No. Only this one." Mikasa smiled, seeming lost in nostalgia. Erna knew better than to ask if she could borrow it. She didn't know what the deal with that scarf was, but clearly it carried an intense amount of sentimental value.

Erna laid her head on her arm, puzzling over how she could hide her hickey for however long it would take to fade. Levi had sarcastically offered her one of his cravats when she complained about it… Which would mark her more as his? The hickey? Or the cravat? She couldn't think of any way to hide it, so she started trying to think of a believable lie about how it got there. She sat silently lost in thought as the dining hall slowly began filling up and the rest of the squad trickled in, complaining about not having the day off after the busy day yesterday. Eventually Erna picked her head up and looked around, "Where are Sasha and Connie?"

"Late, I guess," Eren shrugged.

"But why are they  _both_ late?" Erna was sure that they were in utterly gross puppy love and she was not going to let it go until she could prove it. If she could, then she would have something to fight back against the constant teasing with.

"Probably just the usual, pranking someone, stealing food, it's what they do." Eren knew what Erna was getting at. "You haven't known them as long as we have. They're just best friends."

"Just because they're friends doesn't mean they can't become something more…" Armin responded shyly but very sincerely, like what he was saying meant more than just what they were talking about.

Eren was about to disagree and he turned to Armin, but he stopped when he saw Sasha and Connie walk over together… holding hands.

Erna shot up from her chair and shouted, pointing at them, "I knew it! You two are in gross, stupid love!"

"Not denying it." Connie held up Sasha's hand and kissed it. She blushed and then leaned down to kiss the top of his head. They sat down looking serene and happy. Everyone was shocked, but not shocked. It made sense, but none of them thought it would ever happen. Except Erna, but she hadn't had the bias that came from watching them be best friends for almost eight years.

Connie handed Sasha a roll and she kissed him, very sweetly and lovingly, they were lost in it as if the world didn't exist for a few seconds before Erna interrupted, "That is disgusting… and very disappointing… It's no fun to tease you about it if you're just going to admit to it and shove it in our faces." She sulked.

Eren finally recovered enough from the shock to speak, "But… you guys are  _best_ friends."

Sasha enthusiastically mumbled something that was unintelligible with the roll in her mouth. Connie translated, "She says we're still best friends."

"Stop it. Oh my god. Love is gross." Erna scowled.

Sasha looked to Erna and her eyes went wide. She quickly finished chewing the roll to yell, "Erna! You have a hickey!"

Erna was sure Sasha couldn't see it, so she tried to play dumb, "I don't know what the fuck you're talking about."

"Why are you wearing a turtleneck?!"

"None of my shirts were clean! I had to borrow one of Krista's! I'm not hiding anything, you crazy woman!"

"Prove it!" Sasha leapt up from her chair and over the table, making a grab for the neck of Erna's shirt, but Erna grabbed her wrists and grappled with her until she had Sasha on her knees.

"I will end you," Erna growled.

Sasha winced, struggling to get free of the hold, "That just… proves it!"

Jean smiled, "Sasha's instincts are never wrong."

Erna let go of Sasha's wrists and glared at Jean, trying to kill him with her eyes until Sasha, hands now free, pulled her into a very melodramatic hug, "My poor, sweet Erna! Who defiled you?" She grabbed a roll. "Where did he touch you? Show me on the doll!"

Erna looked at Sasha very seriously and said in a perfect deadpan, "… That's a roll."

"For our purposes, pretend it's a doll."

"Where even would its face be?!"

"It's right there!" Sasha pointed at an arbitrary spot on the roll. But then, not being able to resist holding food without putting it in her mouth, she bit the face off and ate it.

Connie laughed, and flashed a sly smile, "Just show us your neck and prove her wrong."

Erna crossed her arms and stood up, "I don't have to prove anything. I'm going to check on my horse. And next time we go on reconnaissance I'm letting you two get eaten and I won't have to put up with this bullshit ever again." She walked away, adding with a yell over her shoulder, "I hate your love!"

...

* * *

Erna stood, arms crossed, next to a veterinary officer in front of Raven's stall. They watched her as she flared her nostrils, pinning her ears back, and bucking in place.

"So how long?" Erna asked.

"There's no infection, the gauze will keep it clean, but we'll need to keep her on stall rest for at least twenty-four hours just to be sure she won't strain herself and tear the cut further. After that it should be sufficiently healed up for her to graze with the herd and do light work." He paused and then answered before Erna could ask, "I wouldn't recommend using her for any missions for at least a week and a half. Two weeks would be better." Raven kicked a wall of the stall hard enough to make the barn shake and dust fall from the rafters. "Though the stall rest seems to agitate her," the vet added.

"No, that's normal," Erna sighed. A trainee came over with buckets of fresh water and reached to open the stall door. She gave him an emotionless warning, "If you're going in there, bring a pitchfork."

The trainee looked confused, "What for?"

Erna started walking away, "Protect yourself." Another kick shook the barn.

* * *

Erna walked into Levi's office without knocking. He looked up from his desk only briefly, noticing her new turtleneck, "Clever. Are you that ashamed of it?" He didn't sound hurt, just mildly curious.

"It's not that…" She paused, debating whether or not to go on, "It's just the rest of the squad picks on me enough as it is. I don't want to give them one more thing to tease me about."

He didn't lift his eyes from his paperwork and didn't say anything for a while, so Erna went over to the window, watching the sky outside. Finally he said, "You're not training," more as an observation than as a question.

"Everyone's slacking off without you down there. They figure they earned the rest. It's no fun training with people whose heads aren't in it…" She turned around, leaning on the windowsill and looking at the back of his chair. "Are you going to be in here all day?"

"Thanks to you." He didn't turn around or stop working. "Your little tantrum over your precious, bat-out-of-hell mare earned me a lecture from Erwin and a mountain of paperwork."

"I'm sorry," she said softly and solemnly.

"Are you?"

"Honestly," she took a moment to think, then said quietly, "No. If you had gone on with the mission, I would have taken her back here by myself."

"Erwin thinks that's out of character for you – caring about anything."

Erna's tone was still soft, she felt tired, "I've loved that horse since the moment she first kicked me… Same way I fell in love with you." She made a slight smile and walked around to the front of the desk, watching him work.

He still didn't look up from the papers, but he went on, "He said I'm ruining you, making you feel things. I told him he could have you for a night and rape the cold, dead look back into your eyes, break you in half. He told me not to be vile, but I think he considered it."

"… You know, when your voice and facial expression never change, it's hard for people to tell if you're joking."

Now Levi looked up at her, leaning back in his chair and folding his hands behind his head, "I'm serious in that I did in fact say that. But don't worry, I wouldn't let anyone touch you unless it was for my own amusement."

"… Again, hard to tell if you're kidding…"

"I know." He looked down and got back to his work. Erna melted to her knees next to his chair, leaning against it like a ragdoll. After she rested there for a few seconds, he said, "You don't have to stay in here."

"I like watching you do paperwork. It's soothing. I feel like I could fall asleep here on the floor."

"I'm glad  _you_  enjoy it," he was being sarcastic. "I hate it, but you cause me to need to do a lot of it."

"Maybe that's why. You always look at least mildly displeased when you're doing paperwork. It's sexy. I like your scowl." Erna yawned. After a few minutes of silence, she heard the door handle turn. Her reaction was to quickly crawl under the desk and hide, thinking it was most likely someone from her squad and kneeling next to Levi's desk chair would not be the best look if she didn't want anyone to know about what she did with her private time. She heard the door open and close.

"No one ever knocks…"

"You never answer your door," a deep, husky voice answered back. It was vaguely recognizable, but Erna wasn't sure from where. She searched her memory, but didn't come up with anything. She didn't have a good memory for names, faces, people in general.

"How was your vacation?"

The other man scoffed. "If you call getting mangled by a titan and spending two months in a hospital, in an induced coma getting half your bones reset, a vacation, then it was nice," he said with only a hint of sarcasm. He sniffed the air, "Didn't break my nose." He sniffed again, "Where's the girl?"

"She's hiding under my desk for some reason." Levi gave Erna a soft kick. She came out from under the desk and stood up to see Mike Zacharias, who she had never met formally, but did know of. Everyone in the Survey Corps knew of the eccentric, but incredibly skilled Mike.

Erna extended her hand, feeling shy and awkward, and not knowing how he had known she was there without seeing her. "Erna Raban, nice to meet you."

Mike took her hand, but instead of shaking it, he pulled her towards him so that she bent over the desk, leaning down to sniff her hair just behind her ear and then released her. Erna straightened up, surprised and confused.

Mike looked at Levi, "Girlfriend?"

"No," Levi replied. Erna wasn't hurt or offended. She didn't see herself as a girlfriend either. She thought it was an awkward title. She felt secure enough without any kind of label. Levi went on, "More like a slave." Mike smirked.

Erna blushed. "I wouldn't say that."

"You belong to me. What else would you call it?"

Erna thought about it and then answered, "Well by that logic, you're my slave too." This made Mike chuckle.

Levi growled and pointed to the door to the apartment, "Go rest, grown-ups are talking."

.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,

* * *

Erna didn't argue, even though she hated when he implied that she was childish. A nap sounded lovely. All her thinking about life and death early in the morning had exhausted her mentally. She went to the living room, collapsed on the couch, hanging her boots over the edge and immediately fell into a dreamless sleep.

"Oi, slave." Levi woke Erna up, slapping her legs off from where they were hanging over the arm of the couch. "What did I say about the furniture?"

Erna sat up, feeling groggy, she yawned, "I don't remember there being any specific rules."

"You're only allowed on the bed, but now I'm reconsidering even that. Don't ever leave your fucking boots on in here again." Erna started to take her boots off. "Not now. You have to go see Erwin. Get up."

"What? Why?" Erna would be lying if she tried to pretend that there wasn't at least a little worry in the back of her mind about what Levi had said earlier.

"You're not the only one. Now that Mike's back, everyone's getting shuffled around. They're doing evaluations to see if anyone can or should be reassigned. Which is good, I have too many brats to babysit."

"What happens if I get assigned to another squad?" Erna pouted. She didn't think it would kill her, but she still hated the idea.

"Obviously I'll stop loving you and kick you out of here." He watched her smooth out the wrinkles in her clothes. He added, more sincerely, "They shouldn't move you. If anyone should be on my squad it's you. You're a good fighter." He moved closer to her. He loved the tight, midriff-baring turtleneck on her. It made up for the fact that she was trying to cover up his mark. "And you're an okay fuck-toy. At least I'm not bored with you  _yet_ ," he teased her, running his fingers lightly over the exposed skin of her stomach. "But you're in trouble for putting your boots on my couch."

Erna moaned at the evil promise of his voice. It was like a switch that turned her brain to think only of awful things she wanted him to do to her. She reached up and weaved her fingers through his hair, closing the small space between them to nuzzle his collar and lick and kiss at his jawline, until he put his hands on her shoulders and held her away, "Focus."

Erna whimpered, "Well don't say things like that if you want me to focus."

"I told Erwin I only need to keep you, Mikasa, and Jean. Eren is a given. But he's going to look for any excuse to move you to Mike's squad, since Hange doesn't want you. He's worried that you'll compromise my decision-making and he doesn't like that you're acting a little more like a normal human lately." He paused, looking into her eyes, "But I think he's overreacting. You're still very far away from normal."

Erna put her serious, emotionless face on and saluted. "Hai, Captain Levi."

"That's better."

* * *

Erna had been in Erwin's office for at least ten minutes. She wondered if he purposely picked out the chair she was sitting in to be extra uncomfortable, but she didn't move. She wondered if anyone else's evaluations had been this long, or this intense. He had started right off asking very specific, bordering on personal questions. Answering them wasn't the hard part. The hard part was maintaining eye contact.

"How well are you getting along with your squad?"

"They're familiar… Warm… They don't get in the way, but I don't feel too attached to any of them." She answered everything honestly. She had a very strong feeling that he didn't care about what she said so much as how she said it.

"And how do you feel about Levi?"

She didn't hesitate and she didn't look away, even though she wanted to. More than Levi's ever could, Erwin's eyes made her feel unsafe on a visceral level. Right now he looked like he would have no problem with cutting her apart and examining her like one of Hange's experiments. She said very seriously, "I love him."

He seemed unsurprised. His face showed no changes. "How would you feel if I moved you to a different squad?"

"It would make no difference. I would work the same way."

"You don't feel you need to stay close to protect him?"

He was asking her a serious question, but she couldn't help but laugh. That seemed to throw him off. She composed herself again, "What? Like Mikasa and Eren? No. I don't think I can protect him from anything."

"So your relationship doesn't effect the way you think on missions?"

She became very serious again, "… I don't think on missions… Not the way other people do."

"What is it like for you?"

"I don't think of Levi… I don't think of myself… I only think of my orders, but even that isn't really a conscious thought. Whatever directives I have stay somewhere in the back of my head. I'm not making conscious decisions out there." Her voice was flat, calm. She was being as accurate about it as she could.

"How can you act if you don't think?"

Erna thought for a few seconds about how to put it into words. Then she asked him, "You've seen dust moving in the sunlight?" He nodded. "It's like being dust. I don't think. I'm just there. My actions aren't dictated by decisions, I can only float and change course according to how the air moves."

Erwin didn't ask her anything new right away. He just watched her in silence. She didn't move. He yawned. Erna stifled the natural urge to yawn herself. He was testing her empathy…

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So that worked out well, I think. Sorry for the lack of smut. I thought about writing an Erwin x Erna x Levi scene, but I restrained myself because it seemed too OOC. I have a thing for Erwin though. He appeals to my inner troubled girl with daddy issues. Anyway, I had to get Mike back, there was no time for smut.


	14. Preferences

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I've had this little shibari one-shot in my head for a minute, so that's thrown in there. Then I'm like, Jearmin – why not? They're cute. Then I'm all "Flashback, flashback, flashback." All for the sake of getting stuff out of my head and writing a chapter while I figure out plot point details. Yeah, I could just take a day or two to think and not write compulsively, but that is no fun.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: I do not own Attack on Titan or its characters. I do own my OC, Erna Raban. You do not want her. She comes with very complicated care instructions. Hand wash, cold water only, etc.

She stood naked on the cold stone floor. He moved around her quickly, easily, but not in a hurry. He stood behind her, pulled her arms back until her shoulder blades were almost touching, tied them together at her elbows with a soft rope, tightly coiling it down her lower arms, making another knot around her wrists. Slowly. Methodically.

"So gentle…" she murmured quietly as if she were talking to herself.

"Only for now." He gave the rope a hard tug, tightening the knot, and kissing the back of her neck. It gave her chills. It was so abnormal for him to be sweet or gentle that it felt sinister. It made her feel uneasy like the calm before a storm. He gave her a gentle push down and she got to her knees.

He took the loose ends of the rope from the knot at her wrists and wrapped them around her ankles, pulling slowly until her wrists and ankles were only a few inches from each other. Her back arched beautifully, artfully. He knotted the rope tightly, stood up, and admired his work. He moved and stood in front of her again. He pushed her knees apart with the toe of his boot, making her spread her thighs and get lower to the ground. He watched her slowly wet her lips with her tongue, watched her breasts rise and fall with her breathing, but that was as much as she was going to be able to move.

He loosened his cravat, "You get one request before I start," and removed it. He moved and stood behind her again. "After that, I'm not granting requests or listening to begging or pleading." He reached around and draped the cravat over her eyes, pulling it and tying it tightly at the back of her head, quick, deft fingers careful not to catch any of her silky, black curls in the knot. "Any want, I'll fulfill, but only one, so think carefully." He stood in front of her. She bit her lower lip, a sign that she was in deep thought. He left the room to give her some time.

She tried to flex her arms, but the rope was too tight. Nothing hurt yet, the rope was soft, but the position would start to hurt soon. She didn't really need to think about her request, she knew what she wanted the second he said it.

He came back fifteen minutes later, "Did you decide?"

"Yes."

"I can't wait to hear it," he sounded sadistic and cold. Like he knew that nothing she could request would alter the plans he had for her, but he wanted to give her this hope so that he could crush it. But she had no desire to get out of or alter the situation.

"Say my name."

He paused. That was the last thing he expected. "Slave." He had an evil smirk that she couldn't see.

"No, my real name."

Perfect silence for a few moments, then, "… You could have had anything."

"I like the way you say it. You're the only one who says it right," she pleaded.

"Which way is right?" He knew, but he wanted to make her beg more.

"However you say it."

He knew what she was talking about. He preferred to say her name, when he actually used it, with a slight French accent. A dead language. She didn't know that. She only knew it sounded different to her. He took a cloth from his pocket. "Erna… you really wasted that opportunity… Now open your mouth." She parted her lips slightly and he forced the gag into her mouth until she bit down. He tied it around the back of her head.

He stepped back. "You know I might never untie you? You're too beautiful like this. So vulnerable, so objectified… So quiet for once. You're like a marble statue." He brought a finger to her jaw and tilted her chin up. "I should really get someone to come and admire my work."

* * *

Mikasa and Armin sat outside on the grass after dinner. Armin was taking advantage of the full moonlight to study a book he had found about navigating by star formations. He tried to get Mikasa interested, but learning didn't excite her the way it did Armin.

"Mikasa, don't think you have to stay out here with me." When it came to Mikasa and Eren especially, Armin's go-to feeling was guilt over any slight possibility of being a burden.

"I want to," she said at her usual soft volume.

"But you don't seem very interested –," Armin felt badly, like he was boring her, but Mikasa interrupted him to say, "I just wanted to spend time with you. I don't care what we do."

"Mikasa…" Armin was touched. He was always a little surprised at how Mikasa and Eren cared for him. They thought of him more highly than he did of himself.

"Do you think you'll be reassigned?" Mikasa asked calmly.

They had all sat through evaluations with Erwin earlier. Some were shorter, some were longer. Mikasa's had been very short, not even two minutes. Armin thought it had probably only been a formality. Eren could only be on Levi's squad and Erwin wouldn't try to separate Mikasa and Eren. She wasn't worried about that. Armin's evaluation, however, had been at least a twenty minute long interview. Erwin spent the whole time picking his brain about tactics, strategies, and his thoughts on the titans' behavior and patterns. Armin was sure he would be reassigned, either to Hange or Mike, based on the line of questioning. "Is that why you wanted to hang out?" he asked her. If he weren't so smart and didn't know her so well, he wouldn't have been able to tell that Mikasa was worried. She showed no sign of it. But she was smart too. She had to know that Armin would be moved to another squad.

"I just don't want to see less of you." She leaned back and looked at the stars, "Or not be there to protect you."

He couldn't really offer her any comfort on this point. They would have to be apart and that was just the way it was. He couldn't honestly tell her that he didn't need her to protect him, because his intellect wouldn't let him fool himself into thinking that he was physically capable of protecting himself. He couldn't tell her it would be okay. "Let's go inside, it's late."

"I'll walk you back to your room."

Mikasa and Armin walked in silence for a little while. When Armin stopped at the door, Mikasa asked, "How are you two anyway?" referring to Jean and Armin and the whole roommate situation.

"Oh, um, fine, it's great." Armin sounded nervous. He cursed himself for not being able to act cooler when he was nervous. He was terrible at hiding things. Mikasa picked up on it right away.

"Is he being a jerk? You can stay in our room. I can sleep on the floor -," Mikasa immediately overreacted and got overprotective.

Armin had to stop her, "No, it's nothing like that. He's a great roommate. We get along really well." Mikasa eyed him suspiciously, convinced he wasn't telling the truth. "I know you and Eren aren't his biggest fans, but trust me," he smiled and put his hands on her shoulders, "I would tell you if things weren't great."

Mikasa was clearly still suspicious, but she was satisfied for now, "Okay…" As she walked away to go to her own room, she added, "But if he hurts you, I'll kill him." She was not joking.

Armin waited for her to be out of sight before opening the door. Jean was laying on the bed in his boxers. He immediately leapt up and came over to Armin as he shut the door behind him. Jean took the book from Armin's hand and placed it on the side-table near the door, quickly turning his attention back to now hands-free-Armin. "How could you keep me waiting?" He teased Armin, asking as if he had been out long on purpose to be cruel. Jean pressed him against the wall and kissed him while he let his hands roam over his body.

Armin draped his arms over Jean's neck, moaning as he leaned down to place soft kisses all over the blonde's neck and collarbone. He answered him, "Mikasa wanted to talk."

Jean seemed to ignore his reason. He grabbed Armin's ass, lifting him up. Armin wrapped his legs around Jean and let himself be carried to the bed. He wanted to be lost in Jean and be completely in the moment, but he couldn't stop thinking. His thoughts were too much of a distraction and he had to get them out if he was going to really enjoy this. As Jean started taking off his 3DMG straps, dropping them to the floor at the side of the bed, Armin asked, "How was your evaluation?"

"I'll tell you later," Jean didn't want to be distracted or slowed down. He was almost finished unbuttoning Armin's shirt.

"Do you think we'll be moved to different squads?"

Jean sighed, frustrated, "Can we not right now?" He pulled off Armin's shirt and reached for his belt, tugging him closer, kissing his chest as he unbuckled and removed it.

"I'm just a little worried…" Armin said as Jean unbuttoned his pants and quickly, smoothly pulled them off, "About being separated from you guys."

Jean stopped. "Why?" He seemed like he truly didn't understand what the big deal was.

Armin asked softly, "Aren't you worried about what will happen if you or Mikasa or Eren aren't there to protect me?"

"Oh, hell no." Jean said this as if that settled the issue and he pulled off his boxers to continue where he'd stopped.

Armin's eyes widened as he asked, "Why not?" He was hurt. He took it to mean that Jean didn't care. For a moment he wondered if he had been wrong thinking that what was between them wasn't only physical.

Jean stopped again, seeing that Armin completely misunderstood him. He checked his libido for a minute to be able to look into Armin's eyes and say very sincerely, "Because you're smarter than all of us. I know you don't think so, but out of any of us, you have the best chance of surviving on your own. Fighting skill only goes so far until something unexpected happens and you don't have the intelligence to change strategies or improvise and just like that you're dead."

Armin didn't say anything. He realized he had severely underestimated himself once again. He put his arms around Jean's neck and pulled him down into a deep kiss.

* * *

Erna lay at the foot of the bed. It was a compromise. Levi had wanted her to sleep on the floor as punishment for putting her boots on the furniture. He thought she was getting too complacent, too comfortable. He wanted to put more restrictions on her. Secretly, she was glad. She wanted more rules. She wanted him to have more power over her. Otherwise she was just a plain old live-in girlfriend and what fun was that? She didn't ever want their relationship to be "normal."

She thought that Levi's urge to get stricter with her could also be a reaction to the threat of her reassignment. Her evaluation had gone on for nearly an hour, which didn't seem to be the norm. Erwin didn't give her any hints as to her fate. They wouldn't know for a day or two, maybe longer. She tried to remember every detail of the interview.

_/Flashback./_

_Erwin: "How do you think you've changed?"_  
Erna: "… I… feel a wider range of emotions in general. I notice things that I didn't before. Like the difference between a comfortable chair and an uncomfortable one. I can understand why people have preferences about things, attachments to people or certain objects that remind them of people, stuff like that."  
Erwin: "Do you think that effects your performance?"  
Erna: "My performance hasn't changed. So, no."

It had been like a therapy session, Erna thought. Except Erwin was a terrible therapist.

_/Flashback./_

_Erwin: "Why do you think you're in love with Levi?"_  
Erna: "… Because he likes to hurt me."  
Erwin: "You enjoy pain?"  
Erna: "No. I enjoy that he likes to hurt me."

She rubbed her wrists. They were bruised from the ropes. She had struggled a little too much.

_/Flashback./_

_Erna: "I'm sorry I can't be like you."_  
Erwin: "In what way?"  
Erna: "You're disappointed because you thought I was more like you before. But you compartmentalize and ignore your feelings. I just never had any. It's different, but outwardly it looks the same."  
Erwin: "You don't think you can compartmentalize?"  
Erna: "I don't know… I'm new at this."

Erna couldn't tell if she would be reassigned, but she knew Levi was right – she shouldn't be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I mourn the loss of cold, mechanical, emotionless, Chapter 1 Erna. She was fun. I hate for people to have feelings. Everyone should be dead inside. It's much sexier.


	15. Blind Spots

_8:00am Erwin's Office_

Hange slapped a piece of paper down on Erwin's desk, "I want the boy! Give me the boy!" it was the new squad roster she had received just that morning.

"I assume you mean Armin," Erwin was unfazed by Hange's maniacal outburst.

"I'm keeping Armin," Mike stated calmly.

"I  _need_  him!" Hange yelled.

Erwin turned to Levi. "And what are your objections?" As if he didn't know.

Levi held his hand up, "I'll tell you when they're finished. This is entertaining." He looked and sounded bored as always.

Hange reached up to grab Mike's collar and attempted to shake him, but he was too solid. It was like trying to shake a tree trunk. "I NEED HIS BRAIN! GIVE HIM TO ME!" she screamed. Mike just looked at her, his calm expression never changing.

"Hange, I'm decided on Armin. I know you can use his intellect, but he'll be more useful as a tactician than as a scientist." He slid the roster back over the desk to her. "Do you have any other complaints for the record?"

Hange groaned, "Noooo…" her shoulders slumped.

Erwin turned to Levi again. "I'm not letting you keep your girlfriend in your squad. How you would even think that would be okay is beyond me," he warned him, anticipating what he was there for. Hange perked up again, suddenly very curious.

"I told you I needed to keep Jean." Levi deadpanned.

"That's what this is about?" Erwin was definitely surprised.

Mike interrupted, "I want to keep Jean. You can give Erna to Levi or Hange."

"I don't want her anymore. She said all titans were the same." Hange pouted. She was still hurt over that.

"Keep her," Levi said to Mike. Then he turned to Erwin, "You're just pissed off because you think I ruined your efficient little pawn completely free of inconvenient thoughts and feelings. Put her wherever you want, you're only shooting yourself in the foot."

Erwin rubbed the bridge of his nose, "No, Levi, I'm pissed off because you won't acknowledge that having an affair with someone under you is going to effect your decision-making in a way that's detrimental to your squad's survival. You're going to get yourself killed or you're going to get her killed and I need both of you."

Mike dropped a file on Erwin's desk. It was Erna Raban's. "I looked through her file. I can't use her. I train talented thinkers – future squad leaders, not naturally talented killers. You're wasting her on my squad."

Erwin gave Levi a cold look, "She can be taught to feel, maybe she can be taught to think."

"You really think that gets to me, don't you? Put her in whatever squad you want. She'll kill titans the same way," Levi put his hands on Erwin's desk and leaned forward to really drive his point home, "and she'll still crawl to my bed to get  _fucked_  into oblivion every night."

"WHAT?!" Hange shrieked.

Erwin's face tightened up with rage, but his voice was calm, "My decisions are final. All changes are to be made TODAY."

* * *

_7:00am Dining Hall_

"Okay, let's see it." Sasha locked her eyes on Erna the second she sat down.

Erna couldn't bring herself to wear the same turtleneck the fourth morning in a row and she could think of no other recourse. Still, at breakfast she covered her neck with her hand, just on the off chance that Sasha would forget it and leave her alone. No such luck. Erna put her hand down on the table.

"You  _do_  have a hickey!" Sasha was triumphant. It had been days, but the bruise was still dark and very visible.

"I do…" Erna had already made peace with the fact that it was going to be impossible to hide.

"How'd you get it? Tell me! Who was it?" Sasha was so excited.

"Oh, I'm not telling you. But you were right, so, good job." Erna watched the disappointment and frustration overtake Sasha's face.

Sasha leaned over the table and sounded serious for the first time, "Even if I have to torture and question every person here, I will find out who you are making out with."

Erna sipped her coffee, then said, "Mikasa knows. You could start with trying to torture her, but I wouldn't recommend it."

"Oh come on. That makes it so much worse that someone else knows and I don't!" Sasha whined.

"I know." Erna smiled. She was beginning to enjoy pushing Sasha's buttons as much as Sasha liked to push hers.

Connie, who had been listening to the whole thing, leaned over the table. "Is it really that bad?" he stage-whispered conspiratorially, "Is it a rookie?"

"I'm not dumb. You're just trying to get me to narrow down the field to make it easier for you to guess." Erna replied.

"Oh yeah, I didn't even think of that." Connie smiled and brought his hand to the back of his neck.

"What if we play twenty-questions?" Sasha offered.

"No." Erna deadpanned and took another sip of her coffee.

Sasha was undeterred, "Is he shorter than you?"

This Erna actually felt she could answer because it was astoundingly obvious, "Look around, Sasha. Is anyone shorter than me? I mean, besides Krista? Even Connie's a little taller than me."

Connie considered her answer, "So it's Krista?" He brought his thumb and forefinger to his chin, deep in thought, "That makes sense."

Erna stood up. "Yes, it's Krista. You got it," she said, dripping with sarcasm. She took her mug and walked away.

Sasha scowled at Connie. His eyes were glazed over and he didn't notice her glaring. She lightly smacked him upside the head, "Stop thinking about it, you pervert!"

Connie put a finger to Sasha's lips, "Shush, let me have this."

...

* * *

The squad waited in the courtyard. It was after breakfast, but a lot of people weren't training. Their squad leaders were missing. Erna thought she knew why. Levi had received an envelope early while she was getting ready. He wouldn't let her see what was inside or tell her anything about it. It could only be the new squad roster. If Levi wasn't the only one missing, then he probably wasn't the only one who was unhappy with it.

Erna sat in the grass next to Krista. She looked up at the sky. It was sunny and beautiful. There was a peacefulness to the atmosphere. She didn't particularly feel anything about being reassigned. So long as she was allowed to fight or train during the day and go back to Levi at night, she would be happy enough. Krista interrupted her reverie. She held out a handful of wildflowers, "I can teach you how to make a daisy chain, if you want."

Erna smiled. "Sure." She found it impossible to say no to the girl. She didn't know exactly why. She figured it was the same sort of deep-seated, natural instinct to protect weaker things that kept people from shaking babies when they cried. But before Krista could begin showing her, Levi walked over. They all stood and saluted.

"Eren, Mikasa, Sasha, Connie, come with me. The rest of you aren't my responsibility anymore."

"Um, Captain Levi…" Jean was confused. He had been fairly confident he would stay on the elite squad. But Levi didn't say anything. Instead, he shoved the lightly crumpled squad roster into Jean's chest and walked away as Jean scrambled to grab it before it floated to the ground. When he had it, he held it out in front of him. "Mike? That doesn't make any sense."

Armin took the paper from him, "It does if Erwin wants you to lead your own squad eventually…" he scanned it, finding his name and then adding, "At least we get to stay together," which made Jean smile.

Krista asked shyly, "What about me?"

Armin ran his finger down the list, "You're going with Nanaba."

Krista breathed deeply, brought her fist to her heart in a cute half-salute, "Okay! But I'll still see you guys at breakfast and dinner."

"Of course," Armin smiled. Krista ran off to join her new squad. He scanned the paper some more, but then felt staring eyes burning a hole in him, he looked over the paper to see Erna, arms crossed and giving him an impatient, annoyed look. "Oh, sorry, did you… um… want me to find your name?" He stammered out nervously.

"I assumed you would eventually."

"Um…" Armin looked over the roster. "You're with us… with Mike."

Erna snatched the paper from him, saying quietly to herself, "What the fuck?"

Jean was also surprised. "I agree. What the fuck? You would be a horrible leader and you're not smart enough to be a tactician. You're only good at fighting. You belong on the elite squad even more than I do."

Erna looked at the list in disbelief and nodded, "Normally I would punch you in your dumb face, but you're right." She handed the list back to him. Then Mike found them. They saluted and he motioned for them to be at ease.

Mike looked to Jean and Armin, "You two wait with the rest. I'll be right back." He looked down at Erna, "You come with me."

Erna had to walk quickly to keep up. Mike's stride was about three times the length of hers. He led her to an office, opening the door and letting her enter first. He sat at the desk and she took the chair across from him. He took a folder from a drawer and held it up, simply stating, "Your file says you're not a great thinker."

Erna nodded. "I can't even read a map."

"It's not difficult if you have any interest in learning…" Mike set the file down on the desk.

"I don't."

"You act on instinct." Mike understood her perfectly. "If that works for you, then I have no interest in teaching you to do anything else."

"It does."

Mike leaned back in his chair, stretching out his long legs. "Then what do I do with you?"

Erna looked past him out the window. She was quiet. Mike saw a sudden spark in her eyes before she said, "Let me train myself."

"What would you do?"

Her tone turned wistful, dreamy, "I want to go outside."

He knew what she meant. She wanted to leave headquarters, alone. "They're not going to lower the drawbridge to let just you and your horse outside." He thought she was overlooking the obvious.

"I want to work on fighting from the ground without the horse – without trees or buildings. I would rappel down the wall somewhere out of sight and come back before you finished training the rest of the squad." She thought she had a snowflake's chance in hell of getting his approval, but she didn't think it would hurt to at least try. He was laid back; the worst that would happen was he would say no.

Mike folded his hands behind his head, tilted his head back and thought. After a moment, he said, "That would be dangerous."

Erna replied quickly, "Not for me." The fact that he didn't just say no immediately gave her some hope.

He closed his eyes, thought for another moment, he sniffed the air, then he straightened up and looked her straight in the eye, making sure she understood him. "I'll give you permission to act at your own discretion. I won't know what you do with your time." She nodded and made a slight smile. He added, as a warning, "If you don't come back one day, I'll deny knowing of your whereabouts. No one will be sent to look for you. If you die, your body won't be recovered."

"I understand…" Erna would have come up with the same conditions if he hadn't first. "Thank you."

"It's your life. It should be in your own hands." He opened a desk drawer and brought out two glasses, putting one in front of her, "Don't get caught. Levi will kill me."

"Only after killing me."

Mike took a bottle of good whiskey from the drawer, took off the cap, and sniffed it. "For today, take the day off."

Mike poured her a small shot of whiskey into the glass in front of her and filled his own to the brim. Erna smiled, "I can see why Levi likes you. You don't talk too much." Mike smiled and nodded as if to further affirm what she just said. He held out his glass out and she mirrored him.

After they each drank their differently proportioned shots, Mike set his glass down and said, "He used to hate me and Erwin."

Erna's throat burned. She coughed out, "Why?" and put the empty glass on the desk, looking at it wide-eyed as if she had discovered that she just drank poison.

"We had to force him to join the Survey Corps…" Mike's lips formed a nostalgic smile.

Erna was instantly curious. "How did you do that?"

He didn't answer her. He wasn't going to tell her if Levi hadn't already. He held out the bottle, "Another?"

"No thanks." She held up her hands. "I didn't eat breakfast. I'm already spinning." Mike poured himself another giant shot and downed it. Erna was baffled, "Don't you have to work?"

He put the glasses and the bottle away. "It takes a lot more than that."

Erna shrugged, "I guess it would."

* * *

Erna rode Raven around the perimeter inside the walls between headquarters and the outside world. The cut in Raven's shoulder was healing quickly, but she still had to be kept to light work for now. Erna's arms strained to keep a tight enough rein to keep the horse at a trot.

She hadn't planned on getting any rides in for a few more days, but just walking around the inside of the wall to search for blind spots would look suspicious. People didn't tend to just go for casual strolls around the walls.

She stuck to one area - the part of the wall that was near-ish to the stables. There were other blind spots on the wall, where anyone on look-out duty wouldn't see her, but they weren't in places she could get to inconspicuously. If she found somewhere around there, she could go out under the guise of going to care for her horse and slip away. She found her spot, she thought; she circled and serpentined a little to check the angles and be sure. To anyone else it would have just looked like she was working on bending with her horse. Raven took the opportunity of Erna's distraction to throw a buck and when Erna lost her tight hold on the bit, she took a few galloping strides before Erna got her under control and slowed down again.

"You stupid horse," Erna straightened up her back, getting her balance back, "Why do you only want to run when I don't need you to?" She had gotten a good enough look, though, to be satisfied that she wouldn't be caught. As she rode back to the stables, the thought of not following through with going outside the wall never occurred to her. She wanted it too badly. She needed to get back to that place where there were no thoughts or feelings. Her former self wouldn't have cared so much. Her former self didn't need to be high on adrenaline to get a break from thinking or feeling. But now, it would keep her leveled out – less exhausted by all these things she wasn't used to processing. And there was that added benefit of killing titans. Every one she killed would probably equal two or three human lives saved. So, she thought, her plan wasn't completely selfish.

* * *

Levi sat at his desk, his eyes blurring at the print on a stack of papers. He wondered which would come first – would Erwin decide to stop being a vindictive asshole, or would the Survey Corps run out of paper and ink?

Erna came in without knocking, as usual. She stood in front of the desk. He didn't look up, didn't want to be distracted until he was done. Despite what Erwin thought, he really did put a lot of importance on keeping work and play separate. Before she could say anything, he pointed to the other door, "You smell like the stable. Go clean yourself up."

"How long -," she started to ask.

He cut her off, "I don't know how long I'll be." He put down his pen and rubbed the bridge of his nose, "Don't ask questions, just do as you're told."

"Hai, Captain Levi!" she still saluted and bounced off the same as ever. He was glad that hadn't changed and that she didn't care about the difference between him actually taking anger out on her and him just hurting her for the fun of it. She liked it either way. And he had a lot of anger and frustration to get out.

He only turned to watch her close the door behind her. He looked back at the stack of papers, flipping through them. "Fucker," he muttered. He wasn't angry about Erna's reassignment. It didn't matter where Erwin placed her, Levi had her body and soul anyway. He was angry at Erwin's reason for doing so. "The arrogant prick." He'd insisted on placing her in the elite squad in the first place because Levi made sound decisions. Fucking the girl wouldn't change that. Levi was wholly convinced that no matter what Erwin said, it ate him up that Erna would no longer be as cold and thoughtless as he would prefer everyone in the Survey Corps be. More than anything, Erwin hated things that were out of his control. Levi had always known that about Erwin and it had never bothered him. It still didn't bother him. He could certainly understand the impulse. But despite being an insane control freak, Erwin had trusted him until now.

Erna came back after half an hour, fresh faced and with damp hair. She leaned over the desk. She smelled like his soap, too distracting. He told her, "No," before she even said anything.

"But… I… How do you even know what I was going to ask?"

"You can't stay in here and watch me work. I don't need the distraction." He didn't take his eyes away from the report he was going over.

"But I  _like_ to…" she whined.

"You don't always get what you like." He didn't have to look at her to know she was pouting. "Don't pout. I'll pay attention to you when I'm done."

She seemed satisfied, "I was going to skip dinner to watch you scowl at papers, but I guess I'll go eat or whatever." She went over to the door to the corridor, but before leaving she turned around and asked him, "Why don't you ever eat with us?"

He leaned back and thought about the irony of it before answering, "When you're a superior officer it's best not to get too close to your subordinates…"

* * *

Mike walked into Erwin's office. He didn't have to knock, Erwin always kept the door open when he was in there. Erwin was looking out the window, but he turned and smiled when he saw Mike from the corner of his eye.

Mike didn't sit down. He would be short and to the point and he preferred standing anyway. Any chairs besides his own desk chair were always too small. "I just wanted to let you know, I'm letting Raban train herself at her own discretion."

Erwin didn't seem like it bothered him, but he did sound curious, "Why is that?"

"If I just give her orders, she'll never think for herself."

Erwin paused, thought about it, before saying, "That's actually brilliant."

Mike sneered, "You're surprised?"

Erwin smiled warmly, "I guess I shouldn't be."

...

* * *

Erna came to the table last. Even though everyone was on different squads now, they still ate together. She knew that for them it was because they had been friends for so long. For her it was just habit. At least she told herself that. She preferred to think that she still didn't really care where she sat.

"Where did you go today?" Jean asked her from across the table.

Erna was already chewing a bite of a roll that she got from the kitchen and waited before she answered, "I get to train by myself from now on."

"What? How is that fair?" Jean was annoyed.

Erna shrugged. "Because I'm useless?"

"Don't say that. No one's useless." Armin told her.

"Well I am when it comes to the thinky stuff." She tapped her forehead with her forefinger. "But I'll be good to have around when you need someone to kill titans while you do whatever you do. So maybe the reassignment isn't the worst ever."

Armin laughed a little, "Would you like to meet the brains you're protecting?" meaning the rest of the squad.

"If you could point out their faces, that would be sufficient." She didn't want to stop eating to meet new people. Also, she just didn't want to meet new people.

"Just a few smart rookies with some leadership qualities. It doesn't matter." Jean shrugged it off.

Armin told Erna, "He's jealous because a couple of them were asking about you. They were disappointed that they didn't get to meet you."

Erna's eyes sparkled, delighted that she had something she could torture Jean with. "Jealous?" She raised an eyebrow at him.

"Tch. It's no big deal. They're only interested in you because you're a freak. They were equally curious about Eren for the same reason. He's just a different kind of freak."

Erna turned to Armin, pretending to be excited, "I have fans? Am I famous? Do I have a nickname like Levi?"

Armin laughed, "I don't think so."

Jean sneered, "We gave you a nickname already, Doll-Face."

Erna frowned and then shrugged. "I'll see them if we go on a mission. Otherwise I don't really want to know their names. I don't want to get attached like I have with you guys."

...

* * *

Erna went back to the office first. She fully expected Levi to still be working. But, not finding him there, she took the door to the apartment and entered the small hallway separating the living room and the bedroom. She opted to try the former and found Levi on one of the couches. She was careful to go over to the front door and slip off her boots before anything else. He wasn't looking at her; he was sipping tea and staring sidelong at a report on the coffee table, looking like he was trying to set it on fire with his eyes. When she took a step, he held up his hand, still not looking at her, but saying, "Stop." So she did, assuming that he wasn't talking to the paper. He took a sip of his tea, then "Crawl."

Erna got on her hands and knees and crawled past the coffee table to kneel in front of him. "Good slave," he kept looking at the paper on the coffee table, but he absentmindedly brought his hand down to tilt her chin up and lightly rub his thumb over her soft, pale pink lips. She opened her mouth to playfully lick and nip at his thumb and he let her for a few seconds before taking his hand away. He put down his tea and picked up the report and a pen off the table, ignoring her.

Part of Erna liked watching Levi work  _because_ he ignored her and she could just study him, but now it was late and she was starting to feel neglected. Neglected and teased, since she was already wet and throbbing by the time she finished crawling to him. She got between his knees and leaned down to nuzzle her face against the crotch of his pants and then lick broad strokes up the fabric before trying to unbutton them with her teeth. He didn't stop her immediately. When she felt his fingers in her hair, she thought he would stop working and let her keep going, but instead he gave her a sharp tug, pulling her head up and sounding slightly annoyed, "Don't drool on me, you little cock-tease. Go, strip, and wait for me in the bedroom if you can't be patient."

Erna screamed inside her head, but she got up and went to do as he said without protest because he seemed in a mood. It was a delicate balancing act she did around him, scrutinizing him carefully and trying to gauge when acts of disobedience would cause him to punish her in ways that she liked and when it would only result in "real" punishment where he would alternate teasing her and ignoring her, not inflicting any pain, not fucking her, and not letting her come. He was hard to read and sometimes she got it wrong. It would be easier to just be perfectly good and always get the kind of result she wanted, but she felt that would be boring, so she took the occasional risk of disobedience... but now didn't seem like a good time.

She closed the bedroom door behind her, not slamming it even though she wanted to. She did take off her clothes and throw them on the floor as angrily as she could. The act was not as satisfying as she'd hoped, especially since she then had to pick them up and put them away since she still didn't want to take the risk of making Levi too displeased with her. "Aish, so stupid…"

She sat on the bed, knees tucked to her chest, trying to think about anything but how desperately she wanted him to touch her, but at the same time not  _wanting_  to think about anything else. After five minutes that felt like fifty, she thought about bringing herself to orgasm and just going to sleep, but decided that was the most tempting and also the worst idea. He would know and it wouldn't be pretty. Levi had made it clear more than once that she wasn't allowed to come without him in the room and somehow he always knew if she did. Maybe because she couldn't hide that look of contentment. Her face was always easy to read.

Twenty more minutes of trying to wait patiently only made her dizzy with want and desperate need instead of calming her. She felt taut like a bowstring, like if he even brushed up against her or looked at her she would come. She  _hated_ waiting for him. She punched a pillow behind her. She was actually surprised at how good that felt. She quickly grabbed the pillow in her hands and slammed it down full force against the mattress, raising it and bringing it down again and again, feeling her heart rate quicken. The animal part of her wanted to kill something. She growled and ripped the pillowcase with her teeth. She hadn't noticed the door open.

After leaning in the door frame and watching her for a few seconds, Levi startled her with, "What… in the fuck… are you doing?" He didn't sound or look surprised. Her strange behavior had ceased to be surprising a long time ago.

Erna dropped the pillow. She whimpered and whined, "I just want to come."

Levi made a slight, dark smile. He started unbuckling his 3DMG straps as he said, "I must be misremembering. I thought I told you that I would pay attention to you when I was done." He set them down and untied his cravat, removing it and then his shirt.

Erna looked down, his evil tone making her feel regretful at her outburst, "You did."

"I did." He confirmed very sternly. "So why are you shredding my pillowcase like a disobedient little whore with a case of rabies?" He took off his belt and hooked his thumbs into the waist of his pants, sliding them down along with his underwear, freeing his hard, prominent cock. He discarded the clothes, but kept the belt in his hand.

She found it hard to form words while watching him undress. "I… I don't…"

"Hands and knees," He didn't care about what her answer would have turned out to be if he'd waited to hear it. Erna got on all fours without hesitation. He went over and kneeled on the bed next to her, using his left hand to grab her by her hair and pull her head back as he brought the belt down hard on her ass.

Erna made a short scream at the pain of it, but then a moan as the pain released a flood of endorphins. Her body unconsciously tried to lean forward, away from the belt, but he held her hair tightly, so she only ended up arching her neck and back painfully. He tugged her back and proceeded to whip her. He might have said something, but she could only hear her heartbeat roar in her ears punctuated by the crack of the belt.

When she was used to it, past the point of any of the welts on her ass bringing any more or less pain than they already were and she only moaned, not screaming in pain no matter how much force he used, he paused and then hit her lightly, but much lower. Her every muscle tensed and she screamed when she felt the stinging pain of the leather against her throbbing lips. Every throbbing pulse of arousal turned to pain. If it were anyone but him, she could have thought it was an accident. "Ha… Ha… Hai!" she was gasping, stinging bright white flashes of pain at the corners of her eyes, but he only gave her a second to experience it before giving her hair a sharp tug and bringing the belt down on her red ass again, distracting her with the familiar, comforting, dull throbbing pain from the welts while the sharper pain subsided.

When she was moaning again, he discarded the belt. He pulled her up with the hand in her hair, bringing her to sit straight up on her knees before bringing the hand to the front of her neck and pushing her back quickly, almost throwing her down to lie on her back on the soft mattress.

Levi kept his hand on her neck, feeling her quick pulse, taking in her adorably disheveled hair and beautiful porcelain face. He let her get a few deep breaths while he looked into her eyes and asked, "Do you trust me?"

"Yes," she didn't even pause to think about it.

"With your life?" he caressed her delicate neck.

"Completely."

Levi kept his eyes locked on hers as he spread out his thumb from his forefinger, making a V with his hand and bringing it up under her chin, slowly applying more and more pressure to the point where her neck met her jawline. She didn't struggle as her breathing came harder. He watched her pupils dilate and felt her pulse slow under his fingers.

Erna felt light-headed. Her body panicked and tried to gasp for air, but her mind felt calm. Then she felt euphoric as seconds ticked by and her brain was deprived of oxygen. As she felt a vacuum form in her lungs, the euphoria overtook her and her body stopped struggling to take in air. Levi barely touched her clit and she came so hard she could only see white. He removed his hand from her neck, but she didn't notice. She had never experienced anything so intense and she didn't want it to be over. She gave in to the suction of her lungs. Ecstasy kept her from panicking as her vision went dark until she felt a sharp slap across her face. Levi said, "Breathe, you idiot girl," and she filled her lungs with air again. Euphoria fading as her vision refocused and she took deep breaths in and out. Levi kept two fingers over her carotid artery and looked bored as he waited for her pulse to return to normal.

When her pulse and breathing were finally closer to normal, he removed his fingers and moved between her legs. She looked up at him and pleaded, "Do that again."

He smiled, "You couldn't handle it… and I don't want to kill you yet." He lifted her hips, "You'll have to settle for getting fucked." He hummed and grunted as he pushed inside of her. He had to go slowly. Whenever he made her come just before fucking her, she felt even more silky and warm, which was maddening enough without the aftershocks of her muscle spasms tightening and releasing around his cock.

She moaned a request, "Harder."

Normally he would tease her and go even more slowly, torturing her for trying to have any say in how he fucked her. But she'd been so submissive and trusting as he brought her up to the edge of asphyxiation, so he supposed she could have this one request. He leaned over her and bit her neck as he gave her what she wanted, pounding into her hard and fast. She screamed his name and he crushed her lips with his, aggressively forcing his tongue inside her mouth before pulling back and sucking on her lower lip hard enough to bruise her. "Ha – ah – fuck –," he spat out when he felt her start to spasm around him again. She felt so good, he didn't want to pull out and he almost didn't. Just in time, he removed his cock from her as she was still riding waves of her own orgasm; he didn't even have time to cum relatively neatly on her stomach. His cock twitched and spilled onto the sheets. "Ha… Shit." His breathing was ragged, but he only took about four deep breaths before ordering her, "Get up."

Erna's eyes were glazed over and blissed out. She murmured sleepily,"I can't."

He got up from the bed and stood next to it. "This is going to be rough for you then." He ripped the sheets out from under her and off of the bed, causing her to roll off the edge, but she caught herself and landed on her feet.

She stamped her foot, "You  _just_ changed the sheets yesterday! Can you relax for a  _minute_?"

He tossed the sheets into the laundry basket and got new ones from the linen closet. Instead of putting them on the bed, he strode over to her, "You're right. I should." He put the clean sheets in her hands, "You change them. I'm going to take a shower." He walked past her to the bathroom.

"Fuck." She whispered under her breath.

"And change the pillowcase you ripped," he deadpanned over his shoulder.


	16. Anatomy 101

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: I don't own Attack on Titan or any of its characters. I own my OC. I own my body, some clothes, a dog, this laptop, a few succulent plants that I can barely keep alive, a bar of soap that smells like jasmine flowers, and not much else. Oh, also this story. I own this.

Erna woke up from another sex dream. It wasn't a very specific one – all darkness and grabbing and throbbing and taking. For a short time before she opened her eyes, she thought she was still dreaming. When she did open her eyes she realized that she was awake, she then realized a moment later that she was still moaning and the feelings from her dream didn't go away upon waking because Levi had a finger half inside her and she was grinding against the heel of his palm.

He held her tight against him, so that she could feel the hard muscles of his chest pressed against her back and his cock pushing into her thighs. Rather than relax and luxuriate in the feeling, she tried desperately to reach her climax quickly before he could stop. He never woke her up in the morning unless it was to tease her so that she would be horny and distracted all day.

As she felt the pressure build in her lower abdomen, she held her breath and felt tingly all over. Her orgasm built up and she was almost there, but she didn't have a chance to explode before he stopped. She grabbed his arm, tried to hold his hand there and buck against it, she was so close. But she was considerably weaker than him in her half-awake state and he easily slid out of her grip. She moaned and sighed as her muscles went rigid, she tried like hell to get off just by pure will, but it didn't work and the built up feeling faded. She melted and breathed deeply. "Oh fuck me."

She said it as an exclamation, but he answered her as if it were a request, "I don't have time." He got out of bed, "Get up. You can suck me off while I shower and I might let you come." He said it as if he were doing her a favor.

Even though she knew it was an empty promise, she got up to follow him to the bathroom, but then she inhaled sharply in pain. She got dizzy, dark spots forming at the edges of her vision, she sat back down on the bed.

"What is it?" His voice was a bored deadpan, but he  _was_  curious. He'd never heard her react to pain other than when he caused it and she screamed and moaned.

"Chest hurts." She pointed to her lower sternum and winced. "Stabbing."

"That's because you suffocated yourself half to death, shit-for-brains." He leaned in the door frame. He was pissed off, because she  _had_  nearly suffocated herself to death the night before and it had scared him a little, but he wouldn't show it.

Erna was taken aback by his assertion, "You suffocated me!"

There was some rare, slight emotion to his voice, "Wrong.  _I_  only cut off your air long enough to give you a toe-curling orgasm and  _maybe_ kill a few brain cells that you weren't using.  _You_ neglected to start breathing again when I took my hand off your neck. Your chest wouldn't hurt right now if you didn't need to be snapped out of it and ordered to do a simple thing like take air into your lungs."

She pouted because he was right, but he had a way of saying it that made her feel like she was an inconvenience. "… It felt good."

"I know." He hadn't thought it would be irresponsible to take her that close to the edge. He knew what he was doing, knew how to avoid pressing on the nerve that would stop her heart, knew how long he could cut off her air without causing real harm, but he didn't anticipate that the feeling would be so intense that her mind would turn off her visceral nervous system and she would avoid breathing past the point it was safe for the sake of getting off. He hadn't calculated the variable of human unpredictability. He didn't feel great about it, for a brief moment he wondered if he had abused her trust, but he didn't dwell on it because in the end she was fine. He wasn't going to apologize. He couldn't remember ever apologizing for anything. "Come on, you psychotic adrenaline junkie. I'm not going to let you suck my cock, since you'll probably choke yourself to death, but you still have to take a shower."

"Noooo. Why? You never cared before." She knew that showers with your partner were supposed to be sexy, but she didn't get it. Erna hated showering with Levi. He always scrubbed her skin too hard and the water was too hot. Besides, she preferred a five to ten minute shower whereas he made her stay in there for twenty at the very least. So the occurrence of them showering together was somewhere in between rare and nonexistent, even more so in the morning, since Erna didn't see the point of morning showers if she was just going to get dirty and sweaty training and would need to take another one afterwards. Up until now Levi had been relaxed (for him) about it, letting her shower when she wanted as long as it was at least once a day and she was clean enough by his standards when he wanted to touch her.

"I cared less before because I got to see you whenever I wanted," he said as if it was obvious and she was stupid for not already knowing that without him needing to tell her.

Erna relented because it was sweet even though it was delivered with the same bored, deadpan tone that never sounded affectionate, but rather annoyed. She thought that must have been why he woke her up. They had different morning routines that neither of them wanted to change, which meant they didn't really cross paths in the apartment much in the morning. Levi woke up early and was always in the shower by the time Erna's internal clock woke her up ten or fifteen minutes before she needed to go, giving her just enough time to hop out of bed, throw on clothes, brush her hair and teeth, and sneak out of the office early. Unless he woke her up to tease her, they barely said two words to each other in the morning. She had actually been surprised he'd let her stick with her habit of waking up and running out the door this long. "Can I adjust the water temperature?"

"No." He turned and went into the bathroom and started the water running.

"Can you not scrub my skin off?" she called after him.

"No."

"Can I –," she started, but he cut her off.

"No."

She smiled because she wouldn't want him any other way. She went into the bathroom just as he was stepping under the shower. "I was going to ask if I could suck your cock if I promise not to stop breathing."

"Only if you want to be late. I'm not in the mood to be quick." He turned his face up to the running water. Steam was already starting to billow out, which meant he'd made the water even hotter than usual.

Erna looked in the mirror before it fogged over. "I'm going to skip breakfast."

"You're going to breakfast and you're going to eat something for a change," he replied quickly.

"My lip is bruised and I have a very clear bite mark on my neck. I look like an animal mauled me. I catch enough grief as it is." She slowly lost sight of herself as the mirror fogged over with steam.

"Well get used to it because I'm not going to stop. And you're going to eat something at breakfast like a real person if I have to tie you to a chair and funnel gruel down your throat."

Erna took a deep breath of the warm steam filling the room. The deep breath hurt her chest, but the steam felt good in her lungs. "Is this because you can't order me around during work anymore?" she teased.

"I'm still your superior, I can still order you around during work. I just choose to mind my own fucking business. If you're not on my squad, I'm not going to waste time keeping tabs on you. Honestly it's a big fucking relief."

She pretended to be shocked, "You didn't fight to keep me?! I'm hurt."

"As long as you come back here every night, I don't give a shit." What he didn't tell her was that he trusted Mike possibly more than he trusted himself. He could rest easy knowing that Mike wouldn't get her killed. That was why he didn't care.

"So you're going to exchange ordering me around during work for telling me when to eat, breathe, and shower the rest of the time?" she teased him as she stepped into the shower behind him, avoiding the scalding hot water.

"That's pretty much the idea." He grabbed her wrist and shoved her under the shower head. His mouth formed an evil smirk; he enjoyed the way she screamed.

* * *

 

 

Erna arrived at breakfast late anyway, hair still wet, skin freshly over-exfoliated. Jean was quick to point out, "You look like hell," not out of concern.

"You have a horse-face," she said matter-of-factly. She reached across the table and tore off half of a roll that was on his plate, bringing it to her mouth, taking a bite, and hating every second of it.

"Very original." He rolled his eyes.

"Did you… take a shower?" Armin asked, confused. It didn't make much sense to shower  _before_  training or chores. A few people would just because that was when the public washrooms were the least crowded, but they were the exception that proved the rule.

"Yes." She took another bite of the roll and swallowed, barely chewing. She hated food in the morning. For some reason food only tasted good after work, when you were exhausted.

"… Why?" Armin asked, not only because it was a strange thing to do, but it was especially strange for her. They'd never known her to take a shower in the morning and she was kind of known for sticking to a strict routine or at least a very predictable behavior pattern.

Erna was frustrated because she had no excuses, "Fuck. I don't know." She could not think of a plausible reason. Before she could even try to divert attention to something else, Sasha got up from her seat to come over and put a hand on her forehead. "What are you doing?"

"Checking for a fever. Abnormal behavior can be a sign of sickness," she was teasing her. "But your temperature seems normal."

Erna slapped her hand away. "Can't a girl take a shower in the morning without being treated like a murder suspect?"

"You're also eating. I've never seen you eat breakfast before. I'm worried," She was still only teasing. If she was really at all worried it was only that if Erna started eating breakfast there would be less food for her. She moved her hand down to check Erna's pulse and finally noticed the bite mark on her neck and the bruised lower lip and shrieked, "Oh my god, Erna, what happened to you?" She knew. It was pretty obvious. She just wanted to embarrass her. It worked.

Erna took another angry bite of the piece of bread. She scowled and blushed at the same time. "Nothing."

Jean found the whole thing annoying, "The more you make it a big mystery, the more she's going to want to know. Either tell her or stop showing up with bite-marks and hickeys every morning."

"Besides, Erna, we care about you. Wouldn't it be better to just tell us and get it out so we could all be happy for you and you wouldn't have to worry about hiding our – I mean, your relationship?" Armin wasn't lying or incorrect, but he was talking more to Jean than to her. The fact was not lost on Jean and he frowned, but no one really noticed, since he frowned often.

Mikasa leaned over and warned Erna, calmly, "I didn't tell her, but she's going to figure it out. Sasha understands more than she lets on."

Erna took a sip of her coffee, the only thing she enjoyed in the morning. "I very much doubt that," she said coldly. She didn't have a lot of faith in Sasha's detective skills. Even if she weren't so careful, she didn't think Sasha could figure it out. "Why are you so obsessed anyway? Doesn't Connie keep you busy enough?"

Connie blushed bright red, but Sasha just retaliated. "I wouldn't be obsessed if you didn't make it so interesting. If you're this ashamed of it, it must be really good."

"It's not. I'm just very private. You already know too much about my personal life for my taste." Erna wondered how it ever even came this far.

"But you're my adorable baby sister!" Sasha pinched her cheek.

Jean muttered, "She just stole food off my plate, she's definitely your little sister."

Erna grabbed Sasha's wrist and squeezed, "You know I hate that."

Connie grabbed Sasha around her waist and pulled her into his lap, "Come on, Sash, leave her alone before she bites your hand off." Sasha playfully chomped her teeth at Connie and he imitated her. They rubbed noses and kissed, instantly lost in their own little world.

Armin tried to help. "She only picks on you because of the way you react. You make it fun for her. The more you hate it, the more she's going to try to push your buttons."

"Then I've decided I don't care." She erased the anger from her eyes as best she could and her face turned calm as she went back to sipping her coffee. She tried to sound as bored as possible. She tried to remember what it was like to not have a temper or people who cared about your personal life and who you cared about enough to not beat senseless when they bothered you.

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* * *

It was actually really lucky that Erna's chest hurt as badly as it did. Had she been pain free, she would have pressed blindly and aggressively onward with her plan to get outside headquarters' walls unnoticed to kill titans alone in the open. But the pain in her chest made her careful, reminded her to exercise some caution. It was a reminder of vulnerability. If she was going to be completely alone with no horse and no flare gun, then she needed to be flawless. She decided it was maybe time to learn something about what she was doing.

After going out to check on her horse, Erna went back to the castle and found Hange talking to one of her squad members in the courtyard. Erna called over, "Hey Hange! When you get a chance, could I ask you some questions about titans?" Instantly, Hange materialized in front of her. Erna barely even saw her turn around. "How did you do that?"

"Erna! I knew you had some curiosity! What do you want to know? Or do you want an overview in general? Come with me, we'll walk and talk!" She linked arms with the suddenly worried looking girl and pulled her along.

"Um… I just… Oh my god, slow down, your legs are so much longer than mine!" Hange pulled her along at the kind of speed she was only used to when flying through the air with the 3DMG.

They were inside the castle now, Hange slowed her pace a little so she wasn't dragging Erna, but she kept talking fast, "Sorry, I forget sometimes. You act so serious and severe, it's easy to forget how short you are. It's the same with Levi. How are you two anyway?"

_Why does everyone have to know?_ "I'm sure I don't know what you're talking about."

"Okay, I get it. Say no more." Hange actually winked at her. Erna regretted her decision to talk to her with every fiber of her being. But she needed information and this was the only way she knew how to get it.

"So, my question…" Erna began warily as she was dragged along.

"Yes, what is it! I'll be happy to answer any question you can come up with." She dragged Erna into her office and sat down.

Erna didn't take the other chair. She wanted to be able to exit quickly. "Well, I guess, I wanted to just know more about their anatomy in general. Like do we know if their muscles and skeletal structure are the same as ours?"

"Ahh, I wish I could give you a definitive answer. From an observation standpoint, their muscular structure seems the same, especially from what we can see on the ones that are lacking skin in areas, but their body parts are so hot and evaporate so quickly when I try to dissect them I can't say for certain. The skeletal structure I can tell you for sure is the same as ours in components, but the proportions are different. I haven't been able to pick up a titan bone and examine it – they're too hot. So I don't know what their bone density is like compared with ours."

Erna tried to keep her focused, "I guess I want to know if they have other weak points, like in the same places a human would. I know they regenerate fast, but are there efficient ways to slow them down or paralyze them for a short time? I mean, cutting them in the same place our Achilles tendon would be seems to do more than say a blade to the chest. Is it because they don't experience pain or weaken from blood loss, but still have a lot of the same physiology that we do?"

Hange tapped her forefingers together. "They don't experience weakness from blood loss the way we do… We're not even sure if they have a circulatory system or a heart. We know they have stomachs, but otherwise we don't know what organs they do and don't have. I wish we could open one up and find out what their nervous systems are like! They do breathe, which would suggest having lungs and at least some kind of autonomous nervous system, but they don't always seem to experience pain the same way that humans do… Maybe different neurotransmitters… We always thought their general clumsiness in comparison with us was just a function of their size, but maybe it's differently functioning basal ganglia, or the lack of one at all… but how would they move without a brain or nervous system or control muscles without dopamine?" Hange let out a disappointed sigh, "It's so hard to find out about anything other than the muscles and skeleton. If you try to cut them open, they regenerate too fast to get a good look at anything and if you cut their necks so that they can't regenerate, they just smolder and evaporate."

"You have lost me completely." Erna said flatly, but Hange seemed to not hear her as she was lost in deep thought.

"As far as pain goes, it seems to vary from titan to titan," Hange opened a desk drawer, looking for something. "Let me show you my notes on Sawney and Bean!"

This is what Erna was afraid of. "Um, I'm actually really busy, but… another time?" Erna looked at the bookshelves, "I guess what I need for right now is just a better knowledge of human anatomy that I might be able to apply to titans if they do have the same physiology as humans."

Hange sniffled like she was holding back tears, "Erna, I've never been so happy!"

"So if I could borrow a book or som- oof," she felt the wind get knocked out of her as Hange compressed her in a big hug, lifting her off of the ground.

"You can borrow all of the books! Keep any of them for as long as you want!" she hugged Erna tighter.

"Please… put me down… You're crushing my lungs…"

Hange dropped her just as enthusiastically as she had picked her up and turned to her bookshelves. She pulled book after book and piled them in Erna's hands. Just as Erna was about to shout at Hange to stop, a flustered-looking red-headed recruit with golden eyes, fair skin, and freckles appeared in the doorway. She was out of breath, but looked relieved to find them and nervous as she stammered, "Oh, um, Miss Raban, Commander Erwin sent me to find you."Hange did not pause. She kept running her fingers over books and pulling ones she wanted Erna to read.

Erna fixed a cold glare on the messenger, "… Miss… Raban…?" She didn't know what she would have expected to be called, but she didn't like the sound of it. No one had ever used an honorific when addressing her. It was always her first name or her last name, or at the most 'Private Raban.' But she had also never had a messenger sent for her. She was normally very easy to track and find if anyone was looking for her.

"Well, um… uh…" the poor girl was terrified.

"Erna," she sternly corrected her.

"Erna…" the recruit repeated and seemed to let out a sigh of relief.

"What is it?" she snapped as Hange kept piling books in her arms. She didn't like the girl's nervousness, which made her cold, which only made the girl more nervous.

"Commander Erwin wanted me to find you and ask you to come to his office…" she squeaked out.

Erna turned back to Hange, "Okaayy, Hange," she shifted her arms to get a look at the titles of stack of books. "I'm just going to…" she grunted at the weight and moved over to the desk, setting them down, "take these two…" She pulled out two books on anatomy and biology from the middle, "And… I'll see you… later…" She backed out of the room cautiously. Hange seemed as if she didn't hear her at all. She was still absorbed in running her fingers over books, looking for a particular one. When Erna was all the way out of the office, she turned on her heel and started walking quickly towards Erwin's.

The messenger half-jogged to keep up with her. Still nervous, she offered shyly, "I'm Kallie."

"Okay." Erna didn't want to say anything that would encourage the girl to keep speaking. Her nervousness was bothersome. Erna hated nervous recruits. They were hesitant and they second-guessed themselves and made mistakes on missions, which meant death for them or for someone else or both. They were only a liability.

She turned a corner and Kallie stayed right with her. "I just joined the Survey Corps."

Erna sighed. "I can tell," she said quietly and coldly, still not wanting to encourage the girl to follow her. It was a long walk from Hange's office to Erwin's. Hange was the only one who kept an office on the first floor, away from her apartment.

Kallie seemed relieved that Erna was talking in longer sentences now. "Oh? How?"

"You're still alive." Erna turned a corner and made her way up a staircase.

Kallie was no longer relieved, but kept talking nonetheless, "My sister is in the Quartermaster Corps… My family wanted me to join the wall garrison or the military police, but I didn't place high enough for the MP's and my sister, Ada, told me about how you saved her life, so when I graduated I joined the Survey Corps." She said all of this very quickly, in pace with Erna's walking.

Erna stopped and turned around, making the girl nearly crash into her and said calmly, "The woman who got thrown from her wagon?" Erna looked her up and down, "You look like her."

This really encouraged Kallie and she talked even faster, "Really? Everyone says she looks more like my dad and I look more like my mom –," but Erna cut her off as she turned on her heel and began walking again.

"I don't mean your face. I don't remember names and faces. You have the same nervous demeanor she did. I thought it was just shock, but it must be a family trait." If Erna could have berated the girl into leaving the Survey Corps she would have. Kallie reminded her of death. It was easy to picture the redhead freezing in fear and being easy titan-prey.

"Oh…" was all Kallie said.

Erna was glad she had finally shut her up. She only wished she could have accomplished it earlier. She approached Erwin's office. When she stopped next to the open door, the girl was still with her. She paused and turned to look at her, "Don't expect anyone to save you." Her tone wasn't cold anymore, this was genuine advice. People who didn't expect to be saved worked harder to stay alive.

Kallie saluted her and quickly stammered, "I- I won't, Miss-," before Erna stopped her again.

"Erna." She put her hand around Kallie's fist and pulled it away from over her heart and down to her side, "And don't salute me. I'm not a Captain or a Squad Leader. We're the same rank."

She left the girl with that and went into Erwin's office, sitting down in the chair across from him and holding the books in her lap. She concentrated on keeping her face calm and expressionless because he made her feel tense and anxious. She didn't know if she would ever feel easy around him again after that intensely personal interrogation he put her through.

He was writing something. He didn't look up or stop writing when he addressed her, "Raban…"

She wondered if he and Levi knew how much they were the same. "Yes, Sir."

"How is your horse?" He still didn't pause in his work.

"Coming along. The vet and I agree she can be back to work in five days." She tried to sound relaxed, emotionless.

"Good. I'm holding you to that. We'll resume reconnaissance missions in five days." He finally put down his pen and looked at her. "I hope you appreciate that I'm delaying something so important so that you can use your own horse. If it were anyone else, we would continue on schedule." His face wasn't warm or cold. He was very good at looking emotionless.

"I appreciate it very much, Commander Erwin. It means a lot to me. I won't let you down." She said this both to appease him and because it was the honest truth.

"See that you don't." He paused, seeming to study her, "Mike has you training on your own." It was a statement of fact, not a question.

"Yes, Sir," she nodded.

"What are you doing with your time?" He tapped his pen on the desk.

Erna felt a little wave of anxiety, but didn't let it show in her face or voice, "Reading for now."

He was satisfied, but he didn't soften any, "I hope you don't think your reassignment was a petty or vindictive move. I did what I think is best for you and for the Survey Corps."

Erna relaxed a little, "Not at all, Sir. I respect your judgment completely and I couldn't agree more." She smiled and thought of how good it would feel to kill titans, alone, unburdened by the presence or actions of others.

.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,..,.,.,.,.,.,,

* * *

Levi finally got back to the apartment after Erna had already eaten and showered. He found her on the bed, lying on her stomach, knees bent, legs in the air crossed at the ankles, and reading something. She was completely absorbed and didn't even notice him enter the room.  _So that's what kept her from bothering me in my office_. He untied his cravat and watched her for a moment. Her face was cute in its deep concentration, brows knitted and teeth unconsciously biting at her lower lip. He walked over to the bed and she still didn't take notice of him until he took the book from under her fingers.

He looked at the cover, "Basic Human Anatomy?" He easily held her away as she tried to grab it back from him. "Giving up fighting to become a doctor?" he teased her. He tossed the book back on the bed in front of her.

"Learning how to immobilize titans," she flipped through the book, trying to find the page she had been on.

"You cut the nape of their neck." He told her as if she hadn't learned that yet.

"Not if you're on the ground and can't reach straight to the shoulder with the hooks," she said absently.

The solution was very obvious to him, "Don't be on the ground." That was one of the only rules when it came to fighting titans. He ruffled her hair and teased, "I didn't even think you  _could_ read."

She blew a curl out of her eyes, still trying to concentrate on her reading and only answering him absently, "Can't graduate Trainee Corps without reading..."

"I wouldn't know."

That finally caught her attention. She stopped reading and held her head in her hands, watching him. "How did Erwin and Mike force you to join the Survey Corps?"

Levi was hanging up his jacket. His eyes lingered on the embroidered wings of freedom for a moment. "How does anyone force anyone to do anything?" he asked in his bored-sounding tone.

Erna thought about this and answered matter-of-factly, "Blackmail or brute force."

Levi nodded. He started unbuttoning his shirt, getting ready to go take a shower.

"Well which was it?" She was very curious now.

"Both." He took off his belt.

"How?" She was fascinated and relentless.

Levi changed the subject. "Come here, I'll give you a biology lesson," he deadpanned.

Erna laughed. It was a rare sound, which made it possibly better than a scream or a moan to Levi's ears. She gave up the line of questioning. She held her book up, "You can come over here and be my anatomy model."

Levi finished getting undressed and went and stood at the edge of the bed. Erna put her hand just above his knee, "So this is where your quadriceps tendon is. If you cut deep enough to sever it, it should make it more or less impossible to walk... The anterior cruciate ligament would be even better, but it's harder to get at…" She gently pressed into the muscle above his knee and furrowed her brow in concentration. She kept one hand on her book, glancing at it, and moved her other hand up his inner thigh. His cock was already semi-hard and he didn't plan on holding still for much longer, but he exercised some patience; this new, curious side of her was cute. He folded his hands behind his back as her hand travelled up his leg. "And this is where your main femoral artery is, but it's hard to feel the pulse." She pressed her fingers hard into the spot where his thigh met his pelvis.

"Shit!" Levi flinched as he quickly grabbed her wrist and pulled her up by it.

"Does that hurt?!" she sounded surprised.

"No, you filthy brat, it tickles." He let go of her wrist, which was a mistake.

Her eyes lit up. "Really?" She reached to grab him again, "I've never heard you laugh."

He grabbed both of her wrists before she could touch him, "And you never will."

She looked at his hands around her wrists and informed him, "I know seven different ways to break this hold."

He growled, "You don't want to do that."

"Oh, no?" She was pretty sure she did. "What happens if I do and I can successfully tickle you?"

He squeezed her wrists tighter, whitening his knuckles and constricting her blood flow as he leaned down closer to her face to tell her, his voice serious and full of quiet rage, "I'm going to take my belt to your little cunt and beat it so hard that you won't be able to touch your lips or your clit for weeks. Every slight touch afterwards will feel like burning pins and every throb, every time you get wet, will be an aching reminder that you were dumb enough to fuck with me."

Her eyes widened and her mouth went dry as that sank in. "You wouldn't."

"That's only if you break my hold on your wrists. Did you want to know what happens if you go so far as to try to tickle me? I'm going to do all of that, but then I'm going to fuck you afterwards." He brought his mouth close to her ear and whispered, "Which will be  _very_  good for me," he traced his tongue along the outer shell of her ear slowly and whispered, "your tight little cunt hot and throbbing in pain, tightening around me as every thrust makes you feel more intense waves of agony than you ever imagined possible… I wonder what your screams would sound like." She couldn't see his evil smile as she shuddered. He moved back and held her wrists up, his voice returning to normal, "So did you want to show me how you can break this?"

She shook her head, eyes wide, skin paler than usual.

"I thought you wanted to tickle me." He let go of her wrists and she immediately put her palms down flat on the bed.

"I'll be good." She sat perfectly still, every muscle tensed.

He shrugged, "I was almost hoping you would."

She shook her head emphatically, "No thanks."

"That's a shame." He stretched his arms, "Did you need to prod me anymore or can I go take a shower?"

"Nope, I'm good. You can do whatever," she said warily. His sudden return to nonchalance put her on guard.

"Okay, I'm going to take a shower and then probably do what I threatened anyway, just for fun." He turned around and walked to the bathroom, saying over his shoulder, "Unless you want to dust in here and change the sheets."

Erna leapt off the bed, her voice wavering, "Hai!" and ripped the sheets off quick as a flash.

He called out as he started the water running, "If you're not done before I'm out of here or if you miss anything, I'm going to do something much worse." He took a long time with his shower, having fun thinking of worse things.


	17. Conversion Rates

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is my favorite chapter, in case you were wondering.

_Dining Hall, Breakfast._

Freshly showered and last one to the table again, Erna casually walked up to where Sasha sat and reached for a roll on the side of her plate with the hand that was not holding her coffee. Connie grabbed her wrist and pulled it away just in time so that Sasha's fork went into the table and not Erna's hand.

"Holy shit, Sasha! What the fuck?" Erna was amazed for one by the girl's reflexes, and also that she actually would have stabbed her hand if Connie hadn't pulled her away in time. Sasha pulled the fork out of the table with some effort - it was in there pretty deep - and went back to eating.

"You really should know better, Erna. How have you hung out with us this long without learning that you don't come between Sasha and food?" Eren asked her.

Connie gave Erna half of his roll and told her, "Here. I always grab extra food so I have enough to eat after she steals some off my plate." Sasha said something like  _Aw, Connie, you're the sweetest_ , but with her mouth full it just sounded like incoherent mumbling.

"Thanks…" Erna eyed Sasha warily and stepped away slowly and carefully to sit down next to Connie. She took a bite of the piece of bread and washed it down with black coffee. She watched Sasha from behind her mug and when she was done inhaling everything off her plate, Erna asked her, "So, how goes your investigation into my private life?"

"Well, actually the fact that you showered again this morning narrows down the field a lot." Sasha answered nonchalantly.

"How's that?" Erna wasn't worried, assuming Sasha's reason for thinking so was probably completely misguided.

"Well you weren't in Krista's room last night…"

"Sorry, Erna," Krista said quietly, looking guiltily down at the table.

"You're fine, don't worry about it." Erna reassured Krista. She really didn't expect the girl to even cover for her this long. She turned to Sasha, "So?"

"Well, you also weren't in any of the public showers this morning." Sasha went on.

Erna held up her hand. "Wait… wait… You checked?"

"Well so few people shower in the morning, it was easy to check."

Erna thought about this for a second and then asked, "How many naked people did you barge in on?" The girls public showers on each corridor had stalls, so unless Sasha knew Erna's feet very well…

"That's not important." Sasha waved it off.

"I think it's pretty important," Connie gave Sasha a look like he was already constructing lesbian shower sex fantasies centered around her.

"Okay, so I had to kick open some shower stall doors. What's important is that you weren't in any of them, so that means you're sleeping with someone who has an apartment with a bathroom, which means it's a Captain or a Team Leader, so that narrows it down to thirteen people if you count Erwin."

Erna hid her shock and kept her face expressionless, "That's pretty smart." She was both upset and impressed. Just like that, Sasha narrowed the pool down from about three hundred to thirteen.

"I told you she's smarter than she seems," Mikasa said. Sasha nodded at the back-handed compliment, looking pretty pleased with herself.

Erna hadn't planned for this, but she was a good improviser. "What makes you think it's just one person?" She could throw Sasha off, at least for a while.

"What do you mean?"

"I might be a sex addict with a thing for people in positions of authority." Erna had no issues with making Sasha believe something worse than the truth for the sake of keeping her privacy.

Sasha gave her an intrigued look of disbelief. "Are you…? …All thirteen?"

"You're so smart, you tell me," Erna taunted.

"Even Erwin?"

"Especially Erwin. Why did you think my evaluation was so much longer than anyone else's?" Erna said as if it were obvious.

Sasha considered this, then asked, "And Mike?"

"Usually at the same time." Erna deadpanned as if it was nothing. Anyone who was listening was wide-eyed and open-mouthed now, except Sasha and, of course, Mikasa and Eren.

Sasha studied her face, "… I think you're messing with me." She sounded unsure.

"Why would I lie about something like that?" Erna sipped her coffee stoically.

"… I don't know… But you wouldn't just tell me the truth this easily." Sasha was confused and suspicious. She didn't know why, but her intuition told her Erna was lying.

"I would if you pretty much figured it out yourself anyway, which you did. I just gave you a gentle push in the right direction."

Sasha shook her head, "No, you're not telling me something." She reached over and took the rest of Erna's roll from her hand. "And if you don't tell me, I'm going to sneak into the kitchen tonight and steal all of that coffee that you love so much."

Erna didn't believe her. "One: I just did tell you. And two: The pantries are locked up at night."

"It doesn't matter. She used to steal food every night," Eren informed her.

"I almost never got caught, but everyone assumed it was me, so every time the inventory was off they would make me run laps, so I don't do it much anymore. I hate running almost as much as I love food." Sasha sighed wistfully, then turned serious again, "So if you want your black sludge tomorrow morning, you know where to find me."

Connie, who hadn't been listening to any of the conversation since Sasha had mentioned breaking in on other girls' showers, finally shook his head and snapped out of his fantasy. "Huh? What are we talking about?"

Mikasa answered him in a deadpan, "Erna's sleeping with Erwin and Mike."

Erna added, "At the same time," in a serious tone.

Connie didn't respond. He only grabbed Sasha's hand and pulled her away from the table, dragging her behind him, and saying to Mikasa over his shoulder, "We'll be right back. Start training without us."

Eren called after him, "How long?"

"Give us like twenty minutes," Connie answered and they were gone.

Mikasa turned to Erna, "It was almost believable, but I think you went too far."

Jean scoffed, "I knew you were lying."

"Maybe I am, maybe I'm not." Erna finished her coffee and then asked him, "What makes you so sure?"

"Because you're obviously a lesbian. I would have believed you if you said you were taking Hange and Nanaba at the same time," Jean teased.

Erna nodded thoughtfully, "You're right, that would have been a better lie."

Mikasa rolled her eyes, "Obviously every girl who doesn't want you is a lesbian, Jean."

Eren picked up her lead, "If that were true, the human population would have died out already with or without titans." Jean said nothing, but lifted his raised middle finger at both of them.

Mikasa turned her attention to Erna again, "I don't understand why you don't just tell her."

Erna sighed. "It's the one thing I have left. It's okay that you and Eren know, but… it's the last thing I have that keeps me distant."

"You just like the attention you get for being a big mystery," Jean responded, annoyed.

Erna spat back, "You're just jealous because your new squad is my fucking fan club."

Jean stood up from his chair, fingers clenching the edge of the table, "Don't flatter yourself!"

"Fuck this. I don't want to be here when Levi catches you two fighting again." Eren got up and left. Mikasa followed him because she always followed Eren and Krista followed them because she just didn't like confrontation.

Armin watched them, seemingly undecided on whether to stay or go, but ultimately decided to follow his friends after giving Jean's arm a quick squeeze and saying quietly, "You can't get mad at anyone for keeping secrets." Jean grimaced as Armin walked away. He sat back down and stared at the table.

Erna's eyes widened with curiosity. She got up and took the seat directly across from Jean, who looked more depressed than angry now. She leaned over the table, pointed to Armin as he walked out, then to Jean, "There's something going on there." Jean just sighed and put his head in his hands. It was so obvious now, "You two are fucking in love."

"Don't tell anyone." Jean's tone was considerably softer and less combative now.

"Why not? Armin's kind of great," she shrugged. It was probably the highest compliment she had ever paid anyone and she meant it. "I don't get why you would hide it." She paused and thought, then added, "In light of this, I also don't get why you continue to act like such a sexually frustrated douchebag."

"He is 'kind of great.'" Jean's lips formed as close to a smile as he was capable of. "That's why it's frustrating."

Erna thought about how she at least had the benefit of not being anywhere near Levi except for the times they were alone. She imagined it would be an impossible kind of torture to try to hide the way he made her blush and melt if he were inches away all the time. But that just made it more perplexing that Jean would want to hide it. She told him simply, "I don't get you."

"Mikasa and Eren are so overprotective of him."

"You  _are_  easy to beat up, so I wouldn't tell you to not be afraid of them, except for the obvious fact that Armin wouldn't let them beat the shit out of you."

Jean's automatic reaction was, "Fuck you." Then he clarified, "I'm not afraid of that. I'm afraid they'll convince him that he shouldn't be with me. They've been friends since they were kids; their opinion carries a lot of weight."

Erna shrugged, "I'm not going to even pretend to understand why people do the things they do or feel the things they feel…"

"Because you're a freak." Jean's teasing was good-natured this time.

Erna went on as if she hadn't heard that, "But from what I gather, Armin's smarter than you… and me… and pretty much all of us combined. If he thinks you should be open about it, then I would just trust his judgment without questioning him." She let that sink in and then added, "Because you're dumb."

"You're dumb," he responded automatically. He paused, thinking about what she said. "I guess that's good advice," he said begrudgingly. "You're still dumb though."

"That's well established. We don't need to repeat it." Erna didn't mind insults to her intelligence as long as she was respected and left alone for the most part, but there was a limit.

"No, not just in general, though there's that too. But you think that holding on to some personal details and keeping them secret will magically make it so that we're not friends," Jean told her.

Erna crossed her arms, "We're not."

Jean rolled his eyes, "You sit here with us every day."

Erna looked down and made a weak denial, "… I like this table."

"Even if we didn't know anything about you we would still be your friends. It's not something you can control by withholding information. So you may as well tell Sasha and everyone… unless I'm right about you just doing this for attention."

"You really think telling her would make her leave me alone? Because I'd like the opposite of attention. I'd like it if you guys could express your love for me by ignoring me completely." Erna was somewhat serious.

"No, we'll probably just move on to picking on you about something new. Like when we got tired of picking on Connie for being short, we moved on to picking on him for being bald."

Erna smiled, saying softly, "His head looks like peach fuzz."

Jean almost laughed. "See? Having friends isn't so bad. You get to dish out insults as long as you take them."

"I guess it's not so bad. It's all just new to me." Erna leaned back in her chair and smiled peacefully.

Jean said sarcastically, "Really? I'm surprised you haven't had a lot of friends before now."

"Fuck you… I love you too, Horse-Face." He flipped her off. She returned the gesture. "Since we're stuck being friends, did you want to know my secret?"

"No, I'm having fun picturing you with Erwin and Mike. How would that work? You're so small. Mike's cock is probably the size of your forearm."

"Ew." Erna shuddered. "You're disgusting. How does Armin even put up with you?"

Jean raised and lowered his eyebrows, "I'm really good in bed."

Erna covered her ears, "I'm not hearing this. I'm going to throw up."

Sasha and Connie came back in and walked up to the table. Connie asked, "Where'd everyone go?"

"That was only like five minutes at most…" Erna pointed out instead of answering his question.

Connie blushed, "I… had a lot to think about…" Sasha was putting her hair back into a ponytail.

"Your shirt is untucked," Jean told Connie.

"Oh shit, thanks," Connie started tucking his shirt back in.

Erna did a quick calculation, "So if it takes one minute to run back to your room from here… that means you took a whole three minutes, if we're being generous and assuming you didn't take the time to get undressed and then get dressed again." Connie blushed even harder.

"He  _is_ the fastest at 3D maneuvers…" Jean told her.

"Fuck you guys. I didn't want to be late again and give Levi a reason to kick my ass," Connie said in his own defense.

Erna looked over his shoulder to Sasha who was fixing her clothes, "Hey Sasha, that's who I'm fucking. It's Levi. Are you happy now?"

Jean also turned to Sasha, "Oh, and I'm fucking Armin. We're in love."

"Bullshit." Sasha said simply, tugging at the cuffs of her jacket and straightening it out. "Levi hates you," she said to Erna. "And you're a skirt-chaser," to Jean.

Jean shrugged at Erna, "I tried." He had only confessed because he knew Sasha and Connie wouldn't believe him and now he was very self-satisfied.

Sasha turned to Erna again, "I hope you enjoyed your last cup of coffee."

"Sasha, I'm 100% serious! You can ask Levi!" Erna pleaded.

"Oh yeah, I'm going to ask the guy who makes me run laps or mop the corridors if I even look at him wrong. You guys really must think I'm stupid." She grabbed Connie and pulled him after her, "Come on, we'll be late."

"Bye, Speedy," Jean called after him.

"Shut up, Horse-Face!"

Erna's head hit the table. Jean smiled smugly at her, "That was great. We should have done that sooner."

* * *

 

Erna rode Raven out to her chosen blind spot on the wall and dismounted. As soon as she removed her saddle and bridle, Raven threw a kick that Erna had to dodge and she galloped back to graze with her herd. "Fucking bitch," Erna said to herself, but on the inside she was glad that Raven was healthy and her usual self. She laid her saddle and bridle against the wall. No one ever really came out to the wall around the castle, unless maneuvering to the top of it for lookout duty, so she wasn't worried about anyone seeing her stash. From the castle, her saddle against the wall would look like a speck.

She made a quick check to be sure there was no one in sight and just like that, she shot up to the top of the wall in two quick pulls and bursts from her gas canister. After breakfast she had gone back to the room and put on her 3DMG, covering it with her green cloak. If she weren't known for being strange and unapproachable, someone probably would have stopped her and asked her about wearing the cloak on such a nice day, but luckily she still had the luxury of being something of a mystery. Once at the top of the wall, without pausing, she carefully rappelled down, slowly, so that she wouldn't cut her hands on the steel cable. She could have let herself free fall and save herself with a burst of gas before hitting the ground, but she wanted to avoid using it anywhere she could. The Survey Corps Supply Officers kept very careful track of gas canisters. When hers were empty, Erna planned on making a small puncture in each so that she could claim that they had leaked when she went to ask for new ones.

Once on the ground, Erna reeled in the steel cable and hook, and began walking the perimeter of the wall. She moved out of the blind spot she had picked, so anyone on lookout duty who looked down would have been able to see her, but she was okay with that risk. She had done it before and she knew that, if they were even awake, people on lookout duty looked out, away from headquarters, not straight down the wall.

She walked to what she knew was another blind spot. This one towards the east side of headquarters, consciously left blind because of the tall trees making up a sizeable dense forest on that side. If titans came from that direction, they would hear the trees crashing before even seeing them, so posting a lookout guard there wasn't necessary.

Erna pressed her back flat against the wall and took a deep breath. This was the part of her plan where she felt she was riding more on luck than anything else. Even if no one noticed her maneuvering across the dry moat, there were still about one hundred feet between her and the cover of the trees. The only way this part would work was if no one happened to be looking over there. She would have liked to have a little more insurance than that, but she couldn't think of another way. She wished she could have had Armin in on this.

"No more thinking," she whispered to herself. "Just do the thing."She shot her cables into the far side of the moat and made a very low arc over, releasing the hook and landing running on the other side. She ran for the trees, lightly and noiselessly as she could, not looking back. Once she was under the cover of the beginnings of the expanse of forest, she stopped and turned around, standing perfectly still to listen and watch.  _Nothing._

Erna realized she had been holding her breath and she let it out, "Aish, lucky…" she sighed. She turned and walked through the cool, damp forest. As she got further and further, she slowly unburdened herself of all unnecessary thoughts and feelings and gave way to that tensed, adrenaline-fueled time-slowing kind of relaxation as she came out the other side about an hour later, miles away from anything.

* * *

 

Erna had walked in a straight line, the sun signaled it was around 2pm before she heard or saw a titan. She saw it first, off in the distance about half a mile away. It noticed her and covered that distance in clumsy running strides in only a few seconds. She stood still and waited. When it bent to reach for her, she shot her hooks into its thigh, flying past its outstretched hand and using her blades to sever the tendon above the knee. She released the hooks, sheathed her blades, and fell to the ground as the titan fell forward. She stood up and began walking back over to it. The disgusting thing made no outward show of pain, but it pathetically struggled to lift itself back up with its arms, without the use of one knee. It reminded her of an insect with a clipped wing. Erna maneuvered to its shoulder, leaving her hooks in to steady herself as the titan continued to struggle to stand. She took out two new blades and cut the nape of its neck, jumping off after it went limp and flattened to the ground.

Titan blood turned to steam and evaporated from her clothes as she found her footprints in the grass and once she found her path, she started running back the way she had come.

* * *

 

Erna shot a hook into the top part of the wall around headquarters at around 5pm, a little before most people would be finishing training or chores. She propelled herself up about three quarters of the way, but grabbed the cable and pulled herself up the rest of the way to save gas. Just as she got close enough to the top to reach out one hand to grab the stone and pull herself over, a hand grabbed hers and pulled her up too quickly for her to even react. The other hand dragged her over and she fell on her back onto the stones.

Green eyes looked down into hers. "Holy fuck, shit, ohmygoddamnfuckinghell," a river of curses flowed out of her mouth as she caught her breath. "Eren! you scared the fuck out of me! What the fuck are you doing here?"

"Me?! You scared the fuck out of  _me_! What the fuck are  _you_  doing here?" He took her hand and helped her up.

"I asked first!" she said as if she had a right to be indignant. She gave her cable a tug and withdrew the hook she had used to climb.

Eren shrugged and sat down on the edge of the wall, looking out at the landscape, "I come up here to think… whenever I can shake Mikasa…"

Erna took a deep breath, looked around, relaxed. She sat down next to him. "What do you have to think about?" she teased him.

"I think about things, Short-Stuff." He gave her a new nickname. "So what were you doing out there?"

"Looking for titans to kill…" There was no point in trying to lie.

Eren whistled. "Find any?"

"Just one. I don't know how many miles out. Took three hours to walk out, a little less to run back. After that scare, my heart might never recover." She laid back, legs hanging over the edge of the wall, staring at the clear blue sky, still breathing heavily.

"I thought  _I_  was dumb. I want to kill all the titans more than anyone, but you'd never catch me out there without at least a horse and signal flares…"

Erna thought about that, watched the clouds go by and felt the gentle breeze on her face, drying her sweat and making her shiver. She answered him, "It's not about killing titans… Well not  _just_ that… I like the way it feels out there… I guess it's selfish."

Eren nodded. A few moments of silence passed. Then he said, "When we lived in Shiganshina, I dreamed about going outside the walls. I told everyone that being trapped inside the walls was the same as being kept like cattle… Then Maria fell… I joined the Survey Corps… We're in a weird place where we're outside the walls, but still in them. Our headquarters is in titan country, but we're still about fifty miles from Wall Maria where we started." He tapped his fist on the wall beneath them, "And then there's this fucking wall… I'm sick of them…"

"Is that why you come up here?" Erna closed her eyes and listened to the silence. After a minute, she knew he wasn't going to answer her. She asked, "Couldn't you just turn into a titan and go as far as you wanted?"

First he said, "That would be selfish." There was a long pause before he said, "It doesn't work that way anyway."

"How does it work?" Erna felt relaxed, half asleep, probably exhausted from the effort and the sun.

"I don't know." He leaned back on his elbows. "Hange and I were working on it, figuring it out, but every time I shifted it seemed to attract titans. It might have just been a coincidence, but we took a break from the experiments and stopped seeing groups of titans near headquarters."

"What's it like?" she asked dreamily.

"… I think I'm tired of answering that question…" He said quietly.

"Sorry."

He looked at her. Her eyes were still closed. She looked peaceful and pale. If she didn't keep talking to him, he wouldn't have felt sure that she wasn't dead. "What's it like when you're out there?"

"No thoughts… Time slows down… I don't feel happy or sad or angry…" She sighed contentedly.

"Doesn't even sound worth it." Eren thought she would describe something better than that. More like what he imagined he would feel if he ever got outside Wall Maria.

"It's a nice break. Feelings are hard. All this friendship and love and frustration, it's exhausting." Erna didn't understand how people could stand it.

Eren stood up. "You're weird," he said matter-of-factly. He gave her a nudge with his boot. "Let's go."

Erna got to her feet. She realized Eren had his 3DMG, but didn't use the cloak to hide it like she did, which piqued her curiosity, "How do you get up here without anyone noticing?"

"I just grab my 3DMG and if anyone asks I say I'm going to train. Walk out here, pick a spot where no one will see you, maneuver up. Simple." He shrugged.

"I went through the stable and rode my horse to that blind spot over there first." Erna pointed to where she'd left her saddle.

"I don't have to be  _that_  careful. I'm not doing anything that could get me killed," he said.

"Do you think it's a good idea?" She wanted his advice.

He gave this some thought, "I don't know. The whole thing is stupid and dangerous. But if you try too hard to hide it, you look suspicious no matter how careful you are and if you don't try hard enough to hide it, you make it too easy to catch you."

"Very helpful. Thanks." Her voice was full of sarcasm and her face showed her disappointment.

"Well don't look at me. Want me to tell Armin and ask him what he thinks?" he asked sarcastically.

"I don't want you to tell  _anyone_ ," she pouted.

Eren moved to the inside edge of the wall and looked down. "That's fair. Don't tell anyone I saw you up here if you get caught."

"Don't  _tell_ anyone and I won't  _get_  caught." Erna stepped to the edge of the wall and faced out, heels just over the edge.

He smiled. She could be so calm and boring one moment and then a spitfire the next. "Just don't die out there," he was teasing, but he also meant it.

Erna brought her fist over her heart and smiled, "I promise." She stepped backwards and fell, shooting out a cable and saving herself just before reaching the ground.

* * *

 

Erna tiptoed through the seemingly empty apartment. She was pretty sure Levi should be in his office, but it wasn't like he had a set schedule, he just ended up working late a lot. She made it to the bedroom and it was empty. She listened for the shower, but she didn't hear anything. Her heart finally slowed its frantic beat. She ripped off her cloak and took off the 3DMG faster than she had ever done in her life.

It didn't matter how carefully constructed and well-thought out a lie she came up with. She knew that if he saw her and asked her why she was wearing the 3DMG, no matter what she said, he would know if she was lying. So she very carefully put her gear back where she normally kept it, adjusting it carefully until she was satisfied that even someone as OCD as Levi wouldn't notice that it had been touched or moved. She put her cloak back in the closet and finally let out a deep sigh and relaxed.

She found that relaxing felt so much different after being highly stressed for a long period of time. It felt better. She felt light now. She peeled off her sweat-soaked clothes, went into the bathroom and started the shower running. She sat on the edge of the tub and looked at her legs as the water got warmer. She ran her fingers over her thigh, quietly and thoughtfully naming the parts that were now important to her, "quadriceps tendon… hamstring …" She squeezed her knee, "Patellar tendon… lateral collateral ligament…" She thought of the titan body as a machine capable of movement, put together somewhat like the human body. She had only studied very specific parts of Hange's anatomy book. She couldn't name or find any veins or nerves, she went with the assumption that those things weren't relevant to titans. But she learned every tendon, ligament, and muscle that was crucial to movement. Nothing mattered but that and the nape of the neck.

She stepped under the warm water, closed her eyes, and melted for a few minutes before running her fingers up her left arm and squeezing the inside of her upper arm just above the elbow, "Biceps brachii…" She took the longest shower of her life, part of the reason being she was pretty thoroughly gross, part of it being that the water actually felt good for once and she was starting to understand why people would shower longer than just enough to get clean, and part of it being for the sake of remembering and overlearning what she had taught herself.

* * *

 

Erna peeked into Levi's office from the apartment door, and seeing only him in there, entered and shut the door behind her. He didn't look at her until she sat on his desk, next to the report he was writing. She was wearing the lingerie he had gotten her – matching bra and panties made of a deep red silk, patterned with tiny black hearts and trimmed with black lace. He liked dark colors against her skin, it made her look paler, like an illustration on fresh white paper with calligraphy brush strokes of thick black inky spirals for hair, stormy grey ink blot eyes, and a pale smudge of pink watercolor for lips.

He wanted to pull his eyes away from her so he could finish working, but the way she looked suggested to him that maybe a break was in order. "I hope you're not dumb enough to think you can just come in here and sit on my desk whenever you want." He pointed at the floor, wordlessly telling her to get down.

She pouted. "If you keep making me kneel on the stone floor I'm going to get rough knees…"

He exhaled an annoyed sigh. He hated letting her negotiate, but she was right. "Kneel on the desk then. You can at least be a useful paperweight." She brought her knees up and kneeled on the desktop. He looked her up and down, there was something different about her. He eyed her suspiciously, "You're cute…" he said it as if it were a bad thing. "What's the occasion?"

She shrugged, "I'm horny."

"You always are, you slut." He liked to watch her skin flush when he said humiliating things to her. He could almost see her heart beat harder. If he watched her intently enough he could notice the slight change in her breathing as the blood in her veins pumped faster.

"Yeah, but I feel like it's been forever since you last tried to murder me," she teased. She put her hands on her knees and leaned forward, accentuating her cleavage.

He creased his brow as if he were trying to remember, "Didn't I try to murder you yesterday?"

Erna pouted, "No, you only threatened to. You're so busy lately. It's been almost a whole forty-eight hours."

Levi turned back to the report in front of him, picking up his pen, "I wish I had the time and energy to fuck you the eight times a day you would require to stop being a pain in my ass, but as you just pointed out, I am busy."

"Can't you just choke me? Or whip me with the riding crop? Just for five minutes?" she pleaded.

Blood started rushing from his head to his cock, he fought to stay lucid. He told her firmly, "No. Because you say five minutes, but then you're wet and begging me to fuck you, I get suddenly inspired with new ideas for ways to nearly kill you, and then hours have passed and I still have a mountain of work to do here."

"But I promise not to beg… Well, after this… Please? I'll even settle for two minutes of the riding crop if you just hit me really hard…" She fidgeted and squirmed. She was so horny she couldn't even stay still.

"No. I was already tired and you're fucking exhausting. I swear you're really a succubus sent to kill me." He didn't feel that was much of an exaggeration. It was getting harder to say no to her begging. He felt like Mike for a moment because he could swear he could smell her pheromones.

"Just one minute," she insisted.

"How does trying to negotiate with me usually work out for you?" he asked coldly, keeping his eyes on his work, worried that if he looked at her pout he would lose his self-control.

Erna's shoulders slumped, "Not well…"

He couldn't help but look at her. He loved when she looked defeated, when she gave up. "I'll make you a deal, if you're really that horny." Her pout quickly turned into a smile. "Go find someone else willing and bring them back here and they can fuck you." The smile disappeared again.

"You're teasing me," she pouted again.

"I'm dead serious. I'm tired, I have work to do, and you're an insatiable whore."

"But I only want you," Erna whined. She leaned down to lick his neck, just barely getting to dart her tongue out before Levi's fingers found her nipple under the thin, silky fabric of her bra and gave it a pinch hard enough to make her gasp in pain and sit back up again.

He stood up from his chair so that his eyes were level with hers. "I know. And I own you." He pushed her hair away and lightly caressed the edge of her ear and felt her shudder. "You're my fuck-toy and I can share you with whoever I want." He ran his finger down her neck, between her tits, and over her stomach before resting between her legs and feeling how wet he made her. "And I enjoy making you do things you'd rather not." He curled his finger, brushing against her wet slit through her panties, enough to make her shake and tip forward and moan and whimper into his shoulder. "Besides, it gives me a chance to get a better look at the cute faces you make when you're conflicted and trying not to moan."

He stepped back and sat down again. Her face was flushed and her breathing was heavy. Her eyes were glazed over and she whined, unconsciously rocking her hips desperately when she realized he was done touching her. She closed her eyes and brought a hand up to tease her own nipple and moved her other hand down to rub her clit through her panties, trying to make herself come.

Levi opened the top drawer of his desk and took out the brown leather riding crop, giving her hand between her legs a quick, hard smack and bringing her back to reality. Her eyes focused again and she rubbed the back of her hand where he had hit her. He held the crop up, "Get someone to come back here and make you cum and I'll give you ten minutes with this."

"But I  _can't_ ," she whined. She smiled and then pouted, hoping that would be enough to make him change his mind.

"You're a succubus, it shouldn't be that hard."

Erna didn't even know how to seduce a person, much less did she actually want anyone but Levi. But she desperately wanted some attention. She played along only for the sake of keeping him from turning back to his work and ignoring her. "I could get Eren again."

"Choose anyone but the brats on my squad. I see too much of them during the day."

She brought a hand up to her chin and tapped her forefinger against her lips, pretending to think. "What about Krista?"

Levi raised his eyebrows, for once he didn't look too bored, "That would be fucking adorable."

"I was only kidding! She's so innocent. Like an angel. It would feel even more wrong."

"That's the whole point." Levi leaned back in his chair and gave her an evil smirk. "Sex is so much better when you're defiling innocence."

Erna crossed her arms. "Well I'm not doing it."

"Fine." He returned to the report on his desk. "If you can't think of anyone, I'll just get Erwin. Maybe if he gets laid, he'll stop being such an insufferable prick." He caught her shudder out of the corner of his eye, so he asked, "Why are you so scared of him anyway? I'm the one you should really be afraid of." He laid the crop on the desktop and started writing again. His lingerie-clad distraction already cost him fifteen minutes he could have been working.

Erna answered, "Because… I don't know…" She thought for a moment. "You look at me like you'd like to fuck me and  _then_  murder me. Erwin looks at me like he'd like to murder me and  _then_ fuck me."

Levi smiled. He had to suppress a laugh. "That was very eloquent."

Erna tilted her chin up in mock propriety, "Thank you." Suddenly she heard the office door open and she jumped down to hide behind the desk, but not quickly enough to avoid being seen.

Levi looked up, his face unchanging from its baseline of casual boredom, "I was literally just talking about you."

Erwin closed the door. "I don't want to know why." He walked over. "You know, you have a lock on that door for a reason."

"I wouldn't have to use it if you shitty people possessed good enough manners to knock." Levi was kidding with him, of course. Of all people, Erwin knew he never answered the door either way. Erwin smiled, the rough spot in their working relationship had already been smoothed over the day before when Levi had admitted that it at least wasn't 'the shittiest idea ever' to reassign Erna and Erwin relented to concede that maybe the decision had been motivated in some small way by pettiness, and that he still had all the faith in the world in Levi's decisions. And Mike seemed to think that the girl could actually be more tactically-minded than previously thought if left to her own devices, so it was decided all around that the reassignment worked out better than intended or anticipated.

Levi tilted his head towards Erna's hiding spot behind the desk. "She's terrified of you, you know."

Erwin smiled warmly at Levi, but used his serious tone to say, "She should be."

Erna couldn't see either of their faces, so she didn't know they were fucking with her. So when Levi gave her a kick and lifted her up by her wrist, she made a small yelp that sounded something like an "eep!" as he scolded her, "He already saw you. Stop hiding and have some fucking dignity. You're not even naked."

When he was satisfied that she would stay standing and not try to hide again, Levi let go of her wrist and turned to Erwin again, "What do you want anyway?"

Erwin stole a quick glance at Erna, it was impossible not to look, luckily Levi didn't care and her eyes were fixed on the floor. He laid a form down on the desk, facing Levi. "Your requisition form for the upcoming mission."

"What's wrong with it?"

"You really don't know?" Erwin knew Levi was fucking with him. Probably in childish retaliation for the avalanche of paperwork he had to do if he wanted to move forward with the plans for Hange's research proposal.

Levi looked at the form. "It looks fine to me."

Erwin pointed to one of the lines under the 'quantity' column, "You may be surprised to learn that a 'shit-ton' is not a unit of measurement."

Levi played dumb, deadpanning, "You're kidding me."

Erwin moved his finger further down the column, adding, "It also turns out that the Supply Officers couldn't estimate the conversion rate for 'one metric fuck-ton' of gas canisters." Erna couldn't suppress a giggle. Erwin fixed a cold glare on her. "You think this is funny?"

Erna straightened up and wiped the smile from her face. "No, Sir!" She wished she could melt and disappear in a puddle on the floor.

Erwin turned back to Levi, sliding the form across the desk, "Care to fill in real numbers for how many signal flare cartridges and gas canisters you'll need?"

Levi shrugged and took the form. He did some calculations for how many people would be on the missions. While he did, Erwin let his eyes wander over Erna again. Her skin was flushed, especially her face. She kept her eyes on the floor. Her breathing was shallow as if she were trying to not breathe at all. She did seem to be fairly terrified of him. He smiled inwardly. He wouldn't want it any other way. He needed people under him to be a little terrified.

Levi slid the paper back over the desk, catching him staring, he said, "I'll let you borrow her if it'll make you stop being such a sexually frustrated prick."

Erwin tore his eyes away and picked up the requisition form, satisfied with the changes, he replied, "Don't be vile," and he left to bring it back to the Supply Officers.

Erna let out a deep breath once he shut the door behind him and she stared daggers at Levi. "I hope that was fun for you."

"Immensely. Go lock the door."

"I'm never going to be able to look him in the eye again," she groaned, going and locking the door before coming back to stand behind the desk again. "How can you be so much older than me and so immature?"

Levi took the riding crop off of the desk and held it up, simply saying, "Five minutes if you stop talking right now."

"Eight," she countered, "for putting me through that."

"Three minutes. You don't say another word. And you never try to negotiate with me again."

Erna mimed bringing a key to her mouth and locking it. Levi stood up and, taking her wrist and twisting it behind her back, lifting it up towards her shoulder blades until she cried out, he pushed her forward onto the desk. "I'm not going to make this fun for you." He hooked his thumb through the strap of her panties at her hip and pulled them down just far enough to expose her, not wasting any time, he brought the riding crop down hard on her ass and thighs ten times in quick succession. He made it a point to hit her much harder than she was used to or expecting.

Erna screamed and whimpered and instinctively tried to wriggle out of his grasp. He twisted her wrist harder and pressed it down into her back, holding her still on the desk. "Annoying little slut," he hissed at her. He slid the riding crop lightly from the dimples at the small of her back down over the curve of her ass, up and down waiting for her to relax. When he finally saw the tension leave her muscles, he lifted the crop and whipped her hard repeatedly on different parts of the sensitive skin covering the backs of her thighs.

Erna cried out, inhaled and exhaled sharp breaths, her legs went weak. If she had been standing, she would have fallen to her knees. Levi stopped to admire the stinging pink and red welts that were quickly rising, standing out against her otherwise milky-white thighs. He checked the time. "You have two minutes left, but I'm feeling generous. Did you want me to extend it?" He hoped she would have forgotten her deal to keep her mouth shut and give him a good reason to punish her further, but she obviously hadn't as she only shook her head 'no.'

Levi kept track of ticking seconds in his head. "Are you sure? What did you ask for? Wasn't it eight minutes?"

He brushed the tip of the crop over her puffed up welts and she winced. Her whole body tensed up again. He smiled. "I'm in more of a negotiating mood now." He picked a spot just above the point where her ass met her thighs and landed the next few hits all within one centimeter of each other.

Erna's screams became muffled and Levi looked to see that she was biting down on her free hand. He roughly took her wrist and pinned it behind her back with the other one. "No cheating. I want to be able to hear every noise you make." Erna whimpered and groaned, biting down on her lip instead. Levi kicked her feet apart, spreading her thighs as far as they could get with her panties pulled halfway down her legs. He unleashed a flurry of blows to her ass and thighs, sometimes hitting with the tip of the crop and sometimes the shaft, but making sure every blow landed on a welt or bruise he had already created.

Erna gasped and yelped and struggled. Every hit was a new shock to her system. She was unable to even register specifically where each one landed on her skin anymore, but with each her back and neck arched and contorted in agony. Her head felt dizzy with pain and pleasure, hot tears barely pricked the edges of her eyes and wet her eyelashes. She recognized the now familiar feeling of being just on the threshold where wanting him to stop would turn into wanting him to go on no matter how much it hurt.

Levi coaxed a few more screams from her, alternated by body-wracking sobs. His cock became painfully harder in proportion with her agony. He stopped for a moment to lean over her, brushing her earlobe with his lips and telling her quietly, "When you can't sit down tomorrow, remember that it's not a good idea to distract me from my work." He smirked as she whimpered and shuddered, bucking her hips against the desk. "Naughty whore." He brought the crop back and cut the air with one last blow to the reddest welt on her ass that he had avoided until now.

Erna lost herself, "Haa… ahh.. fuck!" She wanted to bite something, to rake her nails over the desktop, curl up into a ball, or rub her clit against the edge of the desk, anything. She ceased to care if he would punish her more for speaking or not, maybe even wanted him to. Pain and orgasmic bliss were all the same now. She was going to beg while she was still lucid enough to form words. "Please," was the only thing she was able to whimper out somewhat intelligibly.

Levi brushed the flat rectangle of leather at the tip of the crop over her clit and slid it gently over her wet lips. He held her still as she tried to rock against it and follow the touch with her hips as he took the crop away again, the tip now glistening with her wetness. She kept begging, her words running together. He mocked her. "Did you say something?" He held the crop up, trying to decide whether he should beat her with it or use it to make her come. "I thought our deal was that you wouldn't speak." He turned the crop over, and pressed the handle against her sex, playing with the idea of fucking her with it. "But I did go over time, so I guess we're both in the wrong," he admitted casually.

Levi let go of her wrists, which seemed perpetually bruised lately. He made a note to stop grasping them so hard and twisting them so much and let them return to their paper whiteness so that he could enjoy making new bruises again. She put her palms down on the desk. He warned her, "Don't you dare scratch my desk, you rabid slut." He took the handle of the crop in his hand again and gave the outside of her knee a tap, "Legs together." She complied and he slid the crop between her legs, pushing her panties down past her thighs and making them fall to the floor. She stepped out of them and he picked them up, balling them up in his fist. He put the crop down on the desk next to her and grabbed a fistful of her hair, tilting her head up and gagging her with the balled up fabric.

He took a few seconds to just stand over her and commit the image to memory. It wasn't often that he took the time and effort to cause her enough pain to make her eyes tear up. Something about her blood stung eyes and wet eyelashes stirred the animal side of him, made it harder to be cold and calculating and hold back enough to avoid traumatizing her too thoroughly. Her body and face gave her the appearance of helplessness, but her eyes locked on his defiantly, daring him to come up with new ways to hurt her. He felt like she was almost taunting him with the fact that she would take it all gladly and still feel hungry with desperate need for him no matter what new cruelty he could imagine and carry out. Wordlessly telling him that on the surface it might seem obvious that the balance of power was tipped completely to his side, but underneath, if one cared to think about the complexity of the relationship, it was really her who easily manipulated him into giving her what she wanted. It just happened that what she wanted was to be broken and forced to submit.

And what he wanted was to make her scream and writhe at his touch. He moved behind her, and put a hand on either side of her waist, holding her as he rocked forward, rubbing up against her. He felt her tense under his fingers. She was stock still and whimpering, caught between the simultaneous and equally strong urges to pull away from him to escape the pain or lean back into him to increase the pleasure.

He could feel the heat coming off of her skin even through his clothes. Nudging her legs apart, he pulled her waist and rubbed the fabric covering his cock over her welts again. He smiled as he watched her fingers clench, hooking into claws, wanting to dig into the wood of the desk, but she caught herself and curled them into fists, digging her nails into her palms instead. He leaned over her, pressing into her harder. He decided he liked the sound of her screaming just as much when it was muffled by a well-placed gag.

"I should just fuck you like this." He pulled her against his pelvis as her body quivered with sobs at the thought of him fucking her from behind. "Nnnh, you feel so good when you cry… and when you come… I wonder if I can make you do both at the same time," he brought a hand down from her waist to rest his fingers on her clit, holding them still, letting her decide if she would rock against them or hold still to decrease the pain being caused by his pants rubbing over her sensitive, fiery skin.

Erna wrestled with her options, but in the end couldn't help trying an experimental roll of her hips, rubbing against his fingers, making sinking heat pool in her abdomen and a fuzzy, dull whiteness cloud her head, but simultaneously shocking her body out of the building orgasm with the intense pain of the friction against her puffy, stinging welts. Her moan turned to a sob of pain and frustration.

"I'm undecided," Levi casually deadpanned as if it were all very boring, "I could fuck you right here like this," he rubbed his pelvis against her again, eliciting another moan and sob from her, "or I could take you to the bedroom and make you ride my cock," he took his fingers off of her clit and picked up the crop from the desk, "so that I can have better access to use this to create some new welts on those sensitive little tits of yours." He reached up and unclasped her bra as if his mind was already made up.

He stepped back, giving her a break from the friction. He asked her mockingly, "Do you have a preference? Because they sound like equally good options to me." He moved to look into her eyes. They were welled up with tears, but feral. "Oh right, you can't speak," he said as if he had forgotten about the gag. He went behind her again and pulled her up by her shoulders, turning her around to stand and face him. Her knees buckled, but he caught her around her waist before she could fall, bending down and lifting her over his shoulder in one easy motion. "I guess we'll just have to try both until I can come up with something better."

Upon reaching the bedroom he tossed her onto the bed on her back and she gasped in pain, even the soft sheets hurt against her skin. Levi tossed the crop onto the bed next to her. He deliberately kept his clothes on and got onto the bed, flipping her over and lifting her to her knees, ass in the air. She spit out the gag and tried to support her torso with her shaking arms, but he pushed her face down into the mattress. He didn't bother to replace the gag, it made no difference to him.

"Little fucking bitch." He took off his belt and unbuttoned his pants enough to free his cock. He wouldn't be able to get deep inside her with the clothes in the way, but it was worth it to cause her that much more pain with the friction of the fabric. He didn't waste any time, positioning himself between her legs and finally guiding his cock inside of her.

Erna took fistfuls of the sheets and bit her lip, hissing at the burn of his touch. Her body quivered, he hooked an arm under her waist to hold her up against him, to keep her from pulling away. He leaned forward and rolled his hips, increasing her pain before she could get used to it, pushing his cock a little further into her and teasing her, "You manipulative little slut. This is exactly what you wanted isn't it?" She only moaned in response, so he brought a hand back and slapped her ass. She screamed. He asked again, "Isn't it?" He ended the question with another cruel grind of his hips against her thighs.

"Ha… Hai, Captain Levi!" she screamed. She might not have planned this part, but nonetheless, it was turning out to be exactly what she wanted.

He hummed his satisfaction at her answer and then growled as he drew his hips back, pulling out of her almost completely before roughly sheathing himself inside her, repeating the motion again and again, gripping her ass with his hands, holding her up to keep her from being pounded down into the mattress. "Nnngh… such a bad whore… always begging me to punish you… never letting me get any work done…"

She sobbed and gasped with every thrust, sometimes screaming, sometimes moaning, sometimes making noises that were a strange combination of both until the line between the pain and pleasure disappeared and every thrust of his cock and slap of his thighs against hers made her moan in ecstasy despite the dull, throbbing pain it brought.

When she stopped screaming and sobbing, Levi smacked her ass again, hard enough to leave a handprint, hard enough to make her mind remember what pain was and cause her to let out a shrill scream. He buried his cock as deep in her as he could only to pull out, slap her ass, and thrust in again as she registered the pain and gasped. He felt her muscles spasm around his cock, trying to draw him in. "Unh… Fuck… You naughty… unh… bitch…" He slapped her ass again, aiming for his previous handprints, making her scream and tense her muscles. She made him feel like an animal. He had to pull out to keep from coming. He took a few deep, ragged breaths, willing himself to calm down.

He husked at her, between breaths, "You have such a tight, wet little cunt." He held her hips and thrust into her quickly again, stabbing inside her, making her moan. "You'd be a perfect fuck-toy if you weren't such a needy slut."

His words set her off. She wanted him to objectify her, use her body, treat her like she was nothing. She wanted him to make her feel like she only existed for his pleasure. She rocked her hips back, trying to get him deeper inside her, but he held her, not letting her get what she wanted that easily. He kept thrusting into her at his own pace, every humiliating thing he could think of to say to her bringing her closer to climax than anything he could do to her physically.

He almost laughed as she desperately tried to buck her hips back with his thrusts and fuck herself on his cock, "You like that?" He slapped her ass again, making stinging pain shoot through her, "Scream for me."

He didn't have to tell her to scream, it was automatic. He went on fucking her, a little faster, "You want more of this?" He slapped her ass again and she screamed, "Hai! Please!" He pulled out of her completely again. She whimpered and leaned back, unconsciously trying to get him back inside her. He held the base of his cock and smacked one of her red welts with it and teased her, "You're not supposed to enjoy your punishment."

She sobbed and whimpered in frustration; fresh tears wet the sheet underneath her. She brought a hand back to massage her clit, he watched and let her get maddeningly close to coming before he pulled both of her arms behind her, pushing her face harder against the mattress so that her frantic begging was muffled. He held her wrists behind her back with one hand as he took his cravat off with the other.

"Such a disobedient, worthless fuck-toy," he growled at her as he tied her arms behind her at the elbows, "Did you really think you deserved to come?" He tied the knot tightly to wrench her shoulders back painfully and he lifted her up so that she was on her knees, back straight, shoulders back and perky little tits on display.

Levi got up, and moved from the bed to take off his Survey Corps jacket and hang it up. The only sound in the room now was her ragged breathing, almost growling. He stared at her as he took his shirt off, undoing buttons slowly as if he were just getting ready for bed and not about to fuck her savagely. Her eyes were filled with animal lust and aggression. He knew he had gone too far in teasing and torturing her. Now she was going to make him work to break her.

Levi casually took off his boots and the rest of his clothes, and came back to the bed, putting his face close to hers. "You're mine… I own you… And if I want you to come, I'll let you."

She could only growl at him, intense sexual frustration deadening the part of her mind that controlled language or any feeling more subtle than wanting to get fucked and achieve orgasm. He picked up the balled-up panties she had spit out and stuffed them back in her mouth. He wasn't worried about her begging anymore. Now he was only concerned that she looked liable to clamp her teeth down on him and not let go.

Levi got on the bed, sitting back against the headboard, he pulled her on top quickly to straddle him and held her hips until she found her balance without her arms free. He let go of her hips and held the base of his cock steady for her, watching her quietly and intently as she slid herself down his length. She made very muffled, but satisfied moans and mewling sounds and started to relax as she fucked herself on his cock, picking her own pace and trying to grind her clit against him every few strokes.

When she finally closed her eyes, Levi reached for the discarded riding crop. He brought the thumb and forefinger of his other hand to his mouth, wetting them with saliva and using them to rub, tease, and pinch her nipples, making her moan and relax more before he snapped the tip of the crop against the tip of one pink nipple and then the other. Her eyes snapped open in surprise and even with the gag, she screamed louder than he thought she would. She stopped moving and whimpered and whined at the pain.

Levi placed a couple of smacks on each of her perky tits and reminded her, "Don't stop riding that cock if you want me to let you come."

He used the crop to make her writhe. She rode him with no discernible rhythm, deep waves of pain interrupting her concentration whenever she got going. He smacked every curve of her and felt her walls tense and clamp around his cock, listened to her moan or whimper through the gag – it was hard to tell which. He whipped her nipples again and watched her eyes slowly change from feral and aggressive to desperate and pleading. He gently slid the crop between her tits and up her throat to brush her earlobe with the tip. She picked up a rhythm again, eyes heavy-lidded with lust peeking out from under her wet, black eyelashes.

Levi lightly caressed her jawline with the tip of the crop. "Are you going to be good?"

Erna craned her neck, exposing her throat and leaning into the crop as an attention-starved cat would lean into a gentle hand. Levi rewarded her with a few bucks of his hips, penetrating her deeper than she could get on her own. He brushed the crop down and over her nipples again and she winced and bit her lip, but her eyes remained submissive and pleading, so he put the crop down and removed the gag from her mouth. Erna hummed appreciatively as he brought his hands to her waist, holding and guiding her as he rewarded her submission with long, deep strokes of his cock.

Erna leaned down carefully maintaining her balance to avoid falling and pressing her tits against him. She nuzzled her cheek against the crook of his neck, moaning and purring for him.

She didn't necessarily deserve it, but Levi brought a hand to the small of her back and pulled her down anyway. She gasped at the contact with her freshly whipped flesh. He quickly sat up and flipped them over so that she was now underneath him.

Erna's body writhed. She could barely handle all of the sensations. If she could stay still, the sheets against her ass and the way her arms were pulled too far back and pinned underneath her would have hurt less, but she had no control. Levi pulled her legs up and apart, keeping them out of the way as he fucked her harder, distracting her from the pain. In an instant her body forgot everything but how good it felt to be taken.

Her eyes glazed over. She almost couldn't keep them open. Her face flushed an adorable shade of pink as she moaned his name. He flashed an evil smirk and he leaned down, slowly bringing his tongue to the curve of the underside of one of her tits and licking up slowly before taking her still freshly stinging nipple in his mouth and sucking on it with a gentleness completely incongruous with the aggressive, hard thrusts of his hips. She arched her back, trading the pain in her arms for the pain of his tongue.

"Nnh, Levi, please…" she was utterly helpless, desperate and pathetic with lust for him.

He drew himself up, never breaking his rhythm, he looked down at her with mocking cruelty, reveling in breaking her. His voice was deep and husky, "Do you enjoy being my submissive little toy? Do you like being humiliated and used for my pleasure like a mindless doll?" She couldn't find the words to answer him, but she moaned and her body went rigid. He gave her permission because he could see that she was about to anyway, "You can come now."

Erna's body shuddered and convulsed in waves of muscle spasms. Her breath stopped and every muscle tensed for a moment as heat flushed her entire body and her consciousness temporarily left her. Her orgasm felt like a storm rolling through her and then drifting away. Her muscles melted into deep relaxation and she panted as Levi gave a few more thrusts before lowering her legs and pulling out. He straddled her torso and placed his cock between her tits, pushing them together and sliding his cock up and down between them. She gasped at the pain, her eyes flying open in sudden shock.

The red, swollen marks left on her flesh made the skin of her tits radiate with a heat that rivaled that of her wet little cunt. Levi couldn't hold back when she gave him that oh-so-innocent look of shock. His hips jerked and he took his shaft in his hand, giving it a single tug before shooting a jet of hot cum over her tits and letting another spatter over her face before grabbing her hair and forcing her mouth open to swallow the rest. He forgot himself, panting and growling like a rabid dog, telling her to taste herself on his cock, take it and swallow all of it, pushing his cock down her throat until he was drained and his head became oversensitive. Her tongue pressed him against the roof of her mouth, sending shockwaves through him. He shuddered and jerked his hips back, pulling out of her mouth and gasping, "Shit!" as he turned and fell onto the bed next to her, staring up at the ceiling and panting. He muttered the expletive in disbelief a few more times as reason and logic took over again.

As Erna caught her breath, and the endorphins melted away, she felt the strong, dull, throbbing pain in all the places her skin had been abused, but she decided she could ignore it. Her head swam. She didn't know if she could move if she'd wanted to.

Erna nudged Levi with her knee. He was still breathing heavy, but he moved to his side to look at her. "Soo… I'm going to assume that you don't want me to move…" she was referring to the fact that her tits and face were splattered with his cum and if she moved at all there was a good chance of it dripping onto the bed and maybe he should get her a towel or something. He gathered that, but he still just looked at her for a few seconds. A streak of cum had landed over her one eyelid, so she could only look at him with one eye while she had to keep the other shut tightly as if she were winking at him and it was fucking adorable. He sighed, "Shit… Don't move…" He put a hand on her shoulders and tilted her up just enough to untie her arms. As he got up and went to the bathroom, he told her, "If any of that gets on the bed, I'll kill you."

She wanted to shout at him that it was entirely his fault, but she was too exhausted. He came back and tossed a warm, damp washcloth at her. She cleaned herself off enough that she could get up and go wash her face thoroughly. When she came back out he was on his back on the bed again, still catching his breath, eyes closed and his arm resting over his forehead. She stood there and admired him for a few seconds letting her eyes roam over his beautifully defined muscles before she hopped onto the bed and straddled his hips, teasing, "I'm not tired at all if you want to go again, old man."

Levi didn't even open his eyes as he crossed his arm to her waist, swiftly pushing her off and making her fall to the mattress next to him. "This is what I'm talking about with your 'five minutes' bullshit. Fucking evil succubus. You're not allowed in my office anymore."

Erna pouted and whined, "Anything but that."

Levi ignored her whining. "And if you keep acting like a fucking animal, I'm going to get you a collar and a leash."

Erna thought about that as she turned onto her side to minimize contact between her welts and the sheets. "I don't hate that idea."

He gave her nipple a light pinch and made her squeal as he got up. He picked up his clothes and started getting dressed again. Erna sat up on her knees, "Where are you going?"

He didn't pause. "I'm going back to my office to finish the work that I probably could have had done hours ago if you weren't such an incessantly horny slut."

"Can I come?" She asked eagerly.

"Absolument pas… petite pute…"

She tilted her head like a confused dog, "What's that?"

He took his cravat off the bed. "It's French for  _Fuck no._ "

* * *

 

_Dining Hall, Breakfast, Next Day…_

Levi, Hange, and Mike sat around a table, holding an early meeting both to catch Mike up on the details of Hange's tentative research project and to work on filling in any considerations they had missed so far in preparation.

"So this is the list of equipment I'll need. I think we can fit it all into two wagons, but if we need space I have a second list of things that are inessential and can be left behind," Hange was talking fast and pointing at different jotted down items with her pen.

Levi scribbled something down on a new sheet of paper. "This is what I'll need." He exchanged his list for Hange's.

She gave him a puzzled look. "There are only two things on here. Bleach and black tea…"

"That's all I need…" Levi picked his teacup up by the rim and took a sip.

There were some hushed gasps and general commotion near the entrance to the dining hall and they turned to see Erna walking down the main aisle between tables with a cold, dead look in her eyes and an ultra-hard steel blade in each hand. She wasn't wearing the 3DMG, but she held the blades from the ends, hooking her thumbs through the holes where the handgrips would attach.

Hange looked on, jaw dropped and eyes wide. Mike looked at Levi and calmly asked, "Should we do something about that?"

Levi just shrugged casually, "Fuck if I know."

…

Sasha sat conveniently at the head of the table, her back to the main aisle of the dining hall, so that she saw her friends eyes just begin to widen in shock before she could see or hear Erna quickly and lightly come up behind her. Before she could ask what they were looking at, twin steel blades were crossed at her throat. Because of their height difference, Erna only had to lean down a little to whisper in Sasha's ear, "Where… Is… It?"

Sasha was too shocked to answer. Connie stood up, but before he could even say anything, Erna straightened one arm out, pointing a blade at his chest and raising her voice, "Are you her accomplice? Tell me where it is or I'll slit your girlfriend's throat."

Mikasa and Eren stood up, about to do something to neutralize the situation, but before they made a move, Levi came up behind Erna and hooked his arm around her neck, squeezing her into a chokehold.

"Oi, hands off my squad," he deadpanned as she struggled for breath. Mike took the blunt sides of the blades in his hands and calmly pulled them away as her arms went limp. He placed them on the table. Sasha slid out of her chair into a quivering mess on the floor. Everyone else stood, watching in shock and disbelief.

Levi loosened his hold so that Erna could take in enough air to stay conscious, but not enough that she could slide out of his grasp. She brought her hands up to clutch his arm and tried to pull it away, "Let me go! I'll kill her!"

Mike knelt down and sniffed Sasha. He gave her a look and held out his hands. "Hand it over…"

Sasha was still shaking, but she managed to take out the two large mason jars of coffee beans from under her jacket. She gave them to Mike and he put them on the table.

Erna was spitting like a crazed demon, "I knew it! You bitch!" Levi hugged his arms around her waist and picked her up as she kicked and screamed. He spun her around and set her down, quickly slapping her hard across the face. That snapped her out of it more or less. She stopped screaming at least.

Jean gave Mike a confused look, "How did you know?"

Mike nodded towards Levi, "We went through pretty much the same thing with him a long time ago when the kitchen ran out of black tea."

Levi turned to Sasha. "Twenty laps for stealing food again."

Connie muttered, "Coffee technically isn't food."

Levi pointed at him, "Twenty laps for being a fucking smartass." Then he pointed at Mikasa and Eren, "And twenty laps for you two for not stepping in sooner."

Eren protested, "We were just about to!"

Levi turned back to Erna. She was glaring at Sasha. When Sasha collected her wits about her enough to turn and look at Erna, she grabbed Levi's shirt, closing her eyes and pulling him down into an aggressive, lip-crushing kiss.

For a very brief moment he actually looked surprised, but then he just shrugged and closed his eyes, letting her snake her tongue through his lips and assault his mouth as he wrapped his fingers in her hair and returned her aggression, kissing her back hungrily. After a few seconds, he finally bit down on her lower lip until she whimpered and cried out. He released her lip from his teeth and she pulled her face away. He gave her a cold, serious look. "I'll deal with you later." He looked at his squad, "Did I not just tell you four to run laps? Why the fuck are you shitty brats still standing here?"

Eren and Mikasa quickly filed out. Connie took Sasha's hands to pull her up off the floor. Sasha whined, "My brain just broke," but Connie pulled her up and dragged her away before Levi could add more laps to their punishment.

Mike stood in front of Erna, saying simply, "You can come with me."

As Erna followed Mike out, Levi called after him, "When you're done with her, bring her to Hange. I want her tested for rabies."

About halfway to Mike's office, Erna remembered and turned around, "I didn't get my coffee."

Mike grabbed her hand and pulled her along a couple steps, "A day without it will do you good. Caffeine addiction can be a terrible thing."

Erna whined, "I won't make it… I'll die…"

They reached Mike's office and he closed the door behind them. He went to the built-in shelves along one wall and took down a beautifully crafted chess board which he set on the desk.

Erna tilted her head, "What's that?"

"Chess." He took out the pieces and began setting them up.

"What's it for?" She really didn't know. She'd never seen a chess board in her life.

"It's a game I'm going to teach you so that you can learn to think things through."

Erna crossed her arms stubbornly and huffed, "I think things through. I went to the kitchen, there wasn't any coffee, so I went to Sasha's room and kicked the door in and the coffee wasn't in there, so I went back to my room…"

"And then?" Mike finished setting up the pieces.

She tried to remember, but couldn't. "… and then I guess everything sort of went black." Erna shrugged.

Mike motioned to the chair at the other side of the desk, "Sit."

Erna sheepishly brought her hand to the back of her head, "Actually, I'd rather stand if it's all the same to you."


	18. Domesticity

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Short scenes of domesticity at Survey Corps headquarters on a relatively drama-free day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: I do not own Attack on Titan or its characters. I only own my OC and this stuff I've written. So I have that going for me, which is nice.

_7:30 am._

"Would you just apologize?" Mikasa tiredly asked Erna. This was becoming a point of contention every time they ate together ever since Erna had threatened and come close to killing Sasha.

Erna looked right past Mikasa, fixing a cold glare on Sasha who sat as far from her as possible at the other end of the table, "Why should I have to apologize? She wanted me to tell her who I was sleeping with, I told her the truth, and she stole my coffee. Where's  _my_  apology?"

"At least admit that you overreacted." Eren said, just beginning to lose his patience.

"I don't believe I did. It's not like I would have hurt her." Erna reached for a roll. The moment she moved, Sasha flinched.

"Well how was she supposed to know that?" Mikasa said soothingly, as if she were dealing with children. Which was not far off from the truth.

"She's not supposed to know. That's the point. If she knew I wasn't going to hurt her, she wouldn't have felt threatened enough to tell me what she did with the coffee." Erna replied, exasperated with the obviousness of it.

Mikasa offered a compromise, "Will you apologize if Sasha apologizes first?"

Sasha spoke up before Erna could answer, "I'm not apologizing for anything! It's not my fault she had a psychotic break and finally snapped!"

"Actually, it might be your fault." Armin reminded her. She turned to him, eyes wide and surprised that he didn't agree with her, so he clarified, "You  _were_  picking on her a lot."

"No more than I would pick on any of you," Sasha pouted.

"Bullshit," Erna hissed under her breath.

"Sasha just picks on you because you're her friend, Erna." Mikasa closed her eyes and rubbed the bridge of her nose.

"I honestly could not care less. I just wanted the coffee back," Erna said, though she had really enjoyed the reprieve in Sasha's teasing since she had threatened to kill her. It was a bonus.

Sasha, lips still in full pout mode, said, "Coffee is gross anyway, it's not even food."

"You're gross!" Erna put her hands on the table and was about to stand up from her chair, but Mikasa put a hand on her shoulder and shoved her back down.

Eren got up, going over to Sasha's seat. He took her hand and pulled her over to the other end of the table as he said, "I'm sick of having this conversation. You two are going to kiss and make up right now and we're never going to mention this again." Mikasa stood up and Eren pushed Sasha down into her vacated seat next to Erna.

Erna crossed her arms and tightened her lips into a straight line as if she were going to refuse to breathe until she got her way. Mikasa gave her a quick smack upside the head. Erna uncrossed her arms and looked at Sasha with murderous eyes, but filled her voice with so much sweet sincerity that it could only be interpreted as sarcasm, "I'm very sorry that I pretended I was going to kill you, Sasha. Next time I threaten to kill you it will be for real."

"Good enough," Mikasa sighed.

Sasha gritted her teeth. "I'm sorry I stole that disgusting black sludge that we now know is the only thing that keeps you from snapping and killing all of us."

"Everybody satisfied?" Eren asked.

"I thought they were supposed to kiss and make up," Connie raised and lowered his eyebrows and gave them a lascivious grin.

Sasha stood up and went back to her seat, "You're a pervert."

Erna looked Connie dead in the eye, making a slashing motion with her finger across her throat and mouthing the words  _You're next._

* * *

 

_9:45 am_

Erna emerged from the other side of the forest outside headquarters. Normally by the end of the hour long walk/jog through the dense forest path, she would have had her head cleared, but as she got used to her routine of sneaking over the walls the adrenaline rush came to her slower. It was getting harder to leave things behind.

As she walked on, through grassy fields, speckled with wildflowers, the beauty of which was lost on her, she struggled to push away thoughts of her friends and how annoying they were, feelings of frustration at how busy Levi was lately, utterly normal things to people who were used to life and having thoughts and feelings about others they cared about in general.

She kept walking, looking up at the clouds and wondering at how it could be so difficult to make your mind go completely blank – a problem, though she didn't know it, that people regularly run into when trying to meditate.

She finally heard a titan, turned in the direction of the booming sound of its running, and saw it off in the distance. As it got closer, she unsheathed her blades, holding them out at her sides and standing perfectly still she whispered,  _Where were you?_

She enjoyed the feeling of her heart pounding in her chest. Time slowed down. The giant thing lunged at her, throwing itself to the ground and sliding teeth-first towards her instead of using its hands to try and grab her to bring her to its mouth. She didn't move to jump out of the way until she could feel it's hot, humid breath.

Erna jumped to the right, turned left, shot her hooks into the titan's prone shoulders, reeling in and slicing the nape of its neck, and landing to the side in a fluid, ballet-like motion before it even made an attempt to get up or lunge again. Part of her wished she had strung it along a little longer, but her practical side couldn't resist a quick, efficient kill.

"Tch…" She put her blades back in their scabbards as she watched the smoldering titan body with contempt. She wasn't consciously aware of it, but she was angry at the thing for being so easy to kill. She turned away and kept walking.

_10:22 am_

Erna held her blades tightly as a 10 meter titan charged at her. She waited, muscles tensed, mind coiled like a spring. Titans had no subtlety or guile. They couldn't fake you out. She watched its shoulders and could tell which hand it was going to use to reach for her. Just as it began to bend over and reach down, she aimed her hooks, shot the line into its inner forearm, reeled herself in quickly, feet landing on the monster's hot skin, she took off running up the arm to just above the elbow. As she made a clean cut through the relatively small muscle near the bicep that controlled the elbow's ability to flex, she withdrew the hooks, shooting them into the opposite arm and reeling herself towards it as the damaged one fell to hang limply at the titan's side. Her arc was too low. As she flew midway past the titan's waist, it was able to reach for her with the hand that still had mobility.

As the hand came towards her, Erna thought,  _This is new_. She had never ended up in a titan's hand before. Before she smacked into its palm, she raised her arms straight above her head. It closed its fingers around her, but she still had her arms free. She waited for it to bring her closer to its gaping mouth. When she was at a good throwing distance, she hit the release on the left handgrip to detach the blade as she flicked her arm, throwing and watching the blade sink into the titan's eyeball. It growled in pain, and as it squeezed her in its hand, she heard her left shoulder pop just before she felt the mind-blowing pain. She screamed as the titan thrashed, its opposite arm still hanging uselessly at its side and she slashed and hacked at its thumb with the blade in her right hand until it dropped her.

She was finally able to withdraw her cables from the arm as she fell and when they were fully retracted back to her 3DMG, she flipped over in her free fall, aimed for the titan's knee and pulled herself in, releasing the cables , shooting them into the back of the opposite leg, slashing the quadriceps tendon on her way past, slashing the patellar ligament behind the opposite knee, releasing her hooks, turning around and shooting them into the front of the leg, slashing the lateral collateral ligament on the way past in a figure eight between the legs, cutting into everything she knew made the knees and legs work in a matter of two seconds and letting herself fall to the ground as the titan fell forward, now divested of the coordinated use of one arm and both legs.

As she bent her knees and hit the ground, the impact sent a jolt of unbearable pain through her dislocated shoulder and she winced, going down to her knees, doubling over in pain. Had she thought about it, she would have found it ironically funny that she and the titan were now in pretty much the same position, left arms both hanging uselessly, except the titan would heal much faster than she would.

_Fucker!_  She hissed through clenched teeth. She stood herself up, shot up onto the shoulder, calmly stalking up to the nape of the neck and making one cut with her right arm and then another to finish the slice. She slid down and walked a little away to avoid the heat of the steam from the quickly smoldering titan body. She stood about twenty feet away and waited. A missing blade would be impossible to explain. She waited for the thing to smolder and smoke and evaporate away so that she could retrieve her blade from its eye.

Blinding pain shot from her shoulder in a fast track straight to her brain. She breathed deeply, telling herself to ignore it.

* * *

 

_4:59 pm._

Erna used more gas than she would have liked getting back up the wall, but she was in too much pain to give it any thought.

She held her left forearm with her right hand, her injury hidden under her green cloak. She made it to Mike's office without any confrontation, but when she got there, he was going over something on the desk with Armin. She tried to keep her face stoic as possible as they noticed her and she asked, "Armin, could I talk to Mike alone for a couple minutes?"

"Oh, um, of course…"

Armin walked past her and she said, "I won't be more than a few minutes." She gently pushed the door closed behind him with her foot.

When she turned around, Mike raised an eyebrow at her. She walked closer to the desk and winced as she let go of her forearm and brought her right hand up to undo the clasp that held the cloak closed, letting it fall to the ground. "Could you do me a favor and just fix this for me real quick?" She said it and nodded at her shoulder as casually as if she were asking him to loosen a jar lid.

Mike's face didn't change as he looked at her shoulder. He didn't need to examine it to see that it was dislocated. He didn't ask her how it happened, he just said, "I'll show you how to do it yourself in case it happens again."

"First," he said as he opened a desk drawer and pulled out the familiar bottle of whiskey and a glass, "Drink this." He filled the rocks glass almost to the top. Erna scrunched her face up. She was about to protest that she could handle it without the liquid painkiller, but he held it out to her, saying, "It helps…"

She wished she could use her other hand to hold her nose as she gulped the burning liquid down. She put the glass back on the desk and shook her head quickly as if she could shake out the taste and muttered, "Devil whiskey…"

Mike put the bottle and glass back in the desk and told her, "Let that sink in a minute." He went through the door between the office and his apartment.

Erna stood still, concentrating on her breathing as her face began to feel warm. Mike came back with a small, clean towel, twisting it between his hands and holding it out to her, "Bite down on this."

Erna took the towel in her teeth and Mike showed her how to slip the ball of her shoulder back into its socket, holding his elbow out at a 90 degree angle and raising it slowly. Erna imitated him, except with more hyperventilating and muffled cursing.

Mike watched her calmly. "You need to relax your muscles. Don't try to do it fast, it won't work."

Erna relaxed her arm, breathing deeply, trying to think about things other than the pain. She concentrated on her heartbeat, brought her elbow out again, willed her muscles to relax, and brought her arm up until her shoulder popped back into place. Her jaw clenched and she screamed  _Fucking shit!_ into the towel, glad for its presence and utility in both muffling her screams and keeping her from biting her tongue clean in half.

She gave him back the towel and he put it in the desk drawer with the whiskey. She moved her arm a little, testing out its mobility. Mike squinted at her, "Rest that. We have a mission in two days… You'll need both your arms."

Erna snapped at him like a bratty teenager, "Tch. I know." She was frustrated that she'd needed his help at all and now it just felt like he was rubbing it in. She picked up her cloak and put it back on, covering up her 3DMG again. Mike barely reacted to her snotty attitude. He simply nodded and walked past her to open the office door, motioning for Armin to come back in.

Erna looked down at the desk, noticing what Mike and Armin had been going over. It didn't look like anything to her. "What's this?"

Armin lit up, going over to the desk and pointing at the drawings on the paper, "It's just an idea to kind of tweak our current formation for reconnaissance missions."

Erna tilted her head in confusion. He explained, "The current formation we use works really well if we assume that every team member has the same level of ability, but that usually isn't the case. Especially in our squad, there is a high level of disparity in skill since besides you, me, and Jean, the members haven't even really seen a titan yet. So I was thinking," he pointed to the head of the arrow formation, "Mike would be the point of the arrow here, leading. Jean and I would be to the right and left of him with the newer members fanning out in our usual squad formation."

Erna interrupted, "Where am I?"

Armin pointed to a dot that looked like the beginning of the shaft of the arrowhead. "That's you. We can put you here and you'll have a better position to respond to signal flares." He drew lines from her dot to the other dots making the wings, "You'll be about equidistant from each of these members, able to get to them quickly, but further from Mike, Jean, and I, who are less likely to need your help."

Erna glared at the paper. "…I'm a babysitter."

Armin tried to soothe her obvious ire, "You'll be a floater… You're the fastest of us and the best at dispatching titans…" She was still frowning. Since appealing to her vanity didn't work, Armin appealed to what he knew motivated her the most, "You'll be the most useful this way. It's the most efficient way for you to keep people safe."

Mike gave her a meaningful look, "Just don't be reckless."

Erna glared at him. "I won't... I'm not." She huffed and stalked out of the office.

* * *

 

_5:30pm_

Erna had been sitting in the grass, watching the horses graze. Now she was lying down because it felt better on her shoulder. She felt… bad. She felt guilty for being a brat with Mike, when all he did was help her and give her the freedom to make her own decisions. She didn't like feeling this way. She also was not aware of the real concept or purpose of apologizing though she had been forced to practice it earlier in the day. So she was not aware that a simple apology would alleviate the guilt she was feeling.

She closed her eyes. When she opened them a few minutes later, Sasha was standing over her. Her heart nearly stopped. "Holy shit! What are – Oh my god. I didn't even hear you!" She sat up quickly.

Sasha just shrugged and sat next to her. "I can be very quiet when I need to be."

They sat in silence for a minute. Sasha opened her jacket and held out a small paper bag to Erna, "Here."

Erna gave her a suspicious look, but took the bag. "What is it?"

"Dehydrated apple slices. For your horse, since you don't seem to care about food."

"You stole them." Erna wasn't upset, more impressed.

"In the middle of the day, too. It was very difficult." Sasha let out a breath as if she were just now realizing what a relief it was that she didn't get caught. "Anyway, I  _am_  sorry that I gave you such a hard time."

"Why are you apologizing? I'm the one who went all crazy." Erna said begrudgingly, hating to admit it, as she opened the bag and gave Sasha an apple slice.

Sasha gladly took it and popped it in her mouth, "Because I'm much more mature than you," she said with her mouth full.

Erna gave her a serious look and said stoically, "It's horrifying to think that you may be right." She whistled for Raven and pushed herself up with her good arm to stand. Sasha stood up too. When Raven slid to a stop in front of them she sniffed Sasha who gave her a playful rub behind the ear.

Erna looked on in disbelief. "She's not trying to kill you."

"Nah, I'm good with animals. You have to be when you're a hunter." Raven huffed and flared her nostrils and Sasha mimicked her as closely as a human could.

Erna gave an apple piece to Raven and then gave another to Sasha as she said with a small amount of affection, "You two are both the worst. That's why you get along."

Sasha scratched Raven under her chin and told her, "These are really hard to get, so I hope you appreciate this." Raven nickered and snorted at her. Then she turned to Erna, "If they notice these are missing, can you persuade Levi to not make me run a million laps?"

"It doesn't work that way. If I asked him to take it easy on you, he'd probably just make you run more."

Sasha's shoulders slumped. She sighed. "You're both scary psychotic freaks, you know. So I guess you're perfect for each other. Your sex life is probably terrifying."

Erna shrugged, "I don't know. I don't have anything to compare it to. What do normal people do?" Sasha didn't answer her. She wasn't going down that road. There was a short awkward silence before Erna asked, just to make her more uncomfortable, "So with you and Connie… How does that work?... Like with the height difference…"

Sasha punched her in the arm, luckily it was the right one, "Shut up! He's not even  _that_  much shorter than me!"

Erna gave her an evil smile, "Doesn't your neck hurt from having to lean down to kiss him all the time?"

"Not as much as yours must hurt. If they ever need to identify Levi's body by his dental records they can just look at your neck."

* * *

 

_6:00 pm._

"So we're agreed the supply drops will be here, here, and here…" Levi pointed at the points on the map on his desk with his pen. "No bullshit second guessing or crazy side trips?"

"It wasn't crazy. I just wanted to exhaust the possibilities to make sure we'd have the best space to work in." Hange sighed, but she circled the three checkpoints on the map in red pencil, confirming that they were agreed. Then she drew a smiley Hange face with glasses and everything. She looked very pleased with herself.

Levi looked at it and then at her. "I hate you."

Hange drew an angry Levi face next to the smiley Hange face. Levi took her pencil from her hand and broke it in half, never changing his calm facial expression. Hange's shoulders slumped in disappointment.

He was about to go over a preliminary inventory list for each checkpoint when Erna let herself in through the side door. He reminded her, "Oi, no pets allowed," his new rule for the office.

Erna rolled her eyes. "I know. I'm not even here for you anyway." She hated this new rule. She set the books she'd borrowed from Hange on the desk. "I wanted to give these back. I got all I could out of them."

Hange's eyes lit up. "Do you have any more questions!?"

Levi gave her a death stare. "If you start rambling about titans, you won't be allowed in my office anymore either."

Erna said grimly, "I have  _zero_  questions." She walked past Hange and out to the corridor.

* * *

 

_8:33 pm._

Erna sat on the other side of Erwin's desk, resting her chin on her folded forearms. She stared thoughtfully at the chess board on the desk with its arrangement of remaining pieces. She had taken to playing chess with Mike after dinner since she wasn't allowed in Levi's office anymore and there was very little to do in the apartment after memorizing all of the useful information in Hange's books, except clean. But after 19 losses in a row to Mike she decided to stop being scared of Erwin and play with him instead since he was the only other person with a set and he had already seen her in her underwear, which was very close to the worst thing she could possibly imagine, so there was very little room for things to get any worse. Besides he looked at her less like a serial killer lately and more the way he did before she had any inclination to think for herself. He was warmer.

Erwin looked up from the letter he was writing to see if she had moved yet. She had not. She was focused so intensely he could almost see he gears turning in her head. "I hope you don't mind if I keep working."

She waved him off, not taking her eyes off of the board. "No, it's fine. Just tell me to leave if I'm bugging you."

He didn't confirm or deny whether or not she was bugging him. He just went back to writing. Erna didn't mind, she knew that if he wanted her to leave he wasn't the type to be shy about telling her. She captured a pawn and caught his attention, "What are you writing anyway?"

"Request for more funding for prospective missions," he told her absently, finishing the sentence he was writing and then looking at the board.

"Everybody's so busy lately," she tried not to pout, but she felt so out of the loop. She had always been out of the loop because she was content to let others do the thinking and tell her where to go and what to do and when to kill, but now she was just jealous of everyone for being so busy. She needed more to occupy her time. "Levi won't let me hang out in his office anymore."

"That must be why he's been more productive." Erwin smiled.

She ignored that. "What do you do when you don't have work to do?"

"I always have work to do." He said simply. She frowned. He tried to be more helpful, "You just have to find something that interests you."

"… I don't know…" She watched him move his knight. "I like this… but no one plays…"

"Mike does." Erwin went back to writing.

"I can't beat Mike." Erna stared at the board and went over varying possible moves and their consequences.

"Neither can I. No one can." Erwin almost laughed. "Armin probably knows chess."

"He's too busy with Jean." She knew she shouldn't tell people, but fuck it, Erwin wasn't people. "They're in love."

"Seems to be going around." Erwin didn't even look up. Nothing surprised him or caught him off guard and if it did, he didn't show it.

"What did you do before you always had work to do?" She moved a rook, kept her finger on it a moment, but then retracted it, satisfied enough with the decision.

Erwin didn't answer her for a few seconds, he concentrated on what he was writing and then, "I studied a lot. Learned new things wherever I could." He moved his knight to a space where he would be able to capture the rook she had just moved.

Erna shrugged. "… Sometimes Levi tries to teach me French, but he gets frustrated with me quickly and gives up." She didn't need to stare at the board now. He was doing what she had planned. She moved her rook to capture his last remaining pawn.

"That sounds about right." Erwin looked at the board for half a minute. He turned back to his letter without moving. "What have you managed to learn?"

"I don't know. It all sounds like a bunch of grunting vowel sounds to me." That actually made Erwin chuckle a little. She tried to think. "… I've mostly picked up curse words.  _Merde. Pute._   _Salope._ He tried to teach me to conjugate verbs, but he got angry when I asked him what a verb is. It's not my fault they don't go over grammar in the Trainee Corps. They only want you to read and write well enough to make a report."

Erwin tried to keep writing his letter, but his eyes kept pulling him back to the chess board. He couldn't tell if she was good at this out of genuine skill or pure dumb luck, but she kept making moves that baffled him. "I could teach you Latin or German. They both have stronger consonants, fewer 'grunting vowel sounds.' Latin is actually close to French. It's good for learning grammar."

Erna tapped her fingers on her arm, waiting for him to move. She knew what he would do. She just had to wait for him to decide to do it. "Like how?"

"The words change depending on what part of speech they are in the sentence. You have noun declensions for the subject, possessive, direct object, indirect object or ablative case. Then there's –," he stopped himself. She was tilting her head to the side as if he were speaking gibberish, which to her, he was.

"Is there something simple to start with?" She asked with no particular enthusiasm or interest.

Erwin finally made a move. "Cogito ergo sum."

Erna made the move she had planned to make since four turns ago, capturing another of Erwin's pieces. "What's that?"

"I think therefore I am." He was writing again. He was almost finished.

"Is that how that works?" she asked rhetorically and absentmindedly as she watched him.

"When we finish this game I'll get you a book."

She shrugged. "I don't really see the point in learning dead languages."

Erwin pulled an envelope out of one of the desk drawers. "Not everything you do to relieve boredom needs to have a clear, specific purpose." He put the letter inside the envelope and folded it closed. "For example, you could argue that that there's no point to playing chess."

She watched him take the candle and drip wax over the envelope, pressing it with a seal of the wings of freedom. "Mike told me it would teach me to think… I'm not sure if I like thinking or not yet."

He smiled at her strangeness and fixed his attention on the chess board again. "It comes with the burden of responsibility."

"That's probably the part I'm not liking… and the boredom… I never felt bored before…" She watched his face as he puzzled over what move he could make.

"What did you do with your time before?"

"Coffee, training, feed my horse, dinner, sleep." It was really simple and hassle free then. She'd had no responsibility for the way she acted or the decisions she made because she didn't make decisions or have more than very superficial interactions. She missed it in a way. But she knew she couldn't go back. "Cogito ergo sum," she repeated under her breath. She watched him make his move, the one she'd predicted he would make. When he took his hand away, she said stoically, "Check," as she moved her queen.

Erwin looked puzzled, "How so?"

"Well, checkmate actually, here and here," she used one of his captured bishops to point to places on the board where she was set up to move and take his king. "You could move here, but that would only delay the inevitable. I said 'check' instead of 'checkmate' to give you the benefit of the doubt in case you came up with something I wasn't seeing."

Erwin leaned back in his chair. "I surrender." Erna began setting up the board again as Erwin observed, "When we first started this, you couldn't beat me. You lost seven games in a row and now you've won six in a row…" He was curious as to what changed.

"I figured out the way you play."

"And how's that?" Erwin raised an eyebrow.

"The same way you lead." Erna's voice was emotionless. "You sacrifice pawns too easily. Most of the time you put them in positions where you think it will be advantageous if they're caught, but you underestimate your opponent's intelligence and it gets you in trouble."

If she looked closely, she would have seen Erwin's normally stern, unexpressive face almost fall. It was a deep burn. But she wasn't looking. She was setting out pieces with quick, deft fingers. He shrugged it off and mused, "That's pretty good. Maybe you'll replace me someday."

Erna responded very matter-of-factly, "Jean's going to replace you, Armin's going to replace Mike…"

Erwin chuckled, "Well, as long as it's decided." She finished setting up. He was white, he moved first. "Who do you think will replace Levi?"

"I don't think about it… Maybe Mikasa…" She moved a pawn.

"Not you?"

"I don't want to be a squad leader. I don't want the responsibility." She watched Erwin's move and went over a hundred possible moves in her head.

"Mikasa's not as responsible as you would think." Erwin would never promote Mikasa to even a team leader position. Her intense attachment to Eren made her over-emotional and unreliable, no matter how skilled she was.

Erna shrugged. She didn't like to think about what would lead to the need to choose a replacement for Levi. "Someone else then…" she said absentmindedly, concentrating more on the game than the conversation.

Before everything, Erwin could never have pictured her as a squad leader. Her skill level in killing titans had made her as valuable as ten squads at least, but only if she was given the right orders to follow. However, lately he noticed her thoughtfulness and a keen talent for manipulative strategy when it came to things she cared about… like winning at chess. He thought if they could harness that and apply it, she would actually be a very good squad leader, but none of that mattered if she didn't have the drive to lead. That was something that couldn't be taught. "Which of these pieces do you think you would be?"

The question interrupted her thought process. She made an annoyed sigh and leaned back in her chair, surveying the board. She paused. She wanted to know before she answered, "Is this a psychological evaluation question? Because you're a shitty therapist."

He smiled. Sometimes she sounded exactly like Levi. "I promise I won't read too much into it."

She held up a pawn, twisting it around as if she were still thinking. She moved the pawn ahead. Then she answered, "A knight."

"Why do you think that?" Erwin moved one of his pawns.

"I don't know. I like the way it moves in sort of an arc." She didn't tell him her real answer. She didn't say that she knew she was the queen because it was the most useful piece. She liked winning and it was to her advantage to keep him underestimating her intelligence.

* * *

 

_10:43 pm._

When Levi finally finished in his office, he tiredly took off his boots, hung up his jacket and walked through the bedroom to go take a shower. He entered the bathroom to find Erna sitting on the edge of the tub, one leg forming an upside down V lathered in soap with her foot also resting on the edge of the tub. She was leaning over, face fixed in careful concentration, holding the same small knife he knew she kept inside her boot. So he had to ask, "What in the fuck are you doing?"

"The fuck does it look like I'm doing?" She slowly scraped away a line of soap lather and waved her knife through the water in the tub. "If you'd rather I didn't shave my legs, I can stop."

"Why don't you use a razor? And why do you sound like a smart-assed little brat?"

Erna didn't stop stripping stubble and soap away from her leg, but she sighed, "I don't know. I'm in a mood lately." She rinsed her knife and held it up, turning it over to admire the edge, "I don't own a razor. I figured you wouldn't be happy if I used yours. Besides what's the point of having a different thing for shaving if this is sharp enough?"

He didn't really care what she used to shave her legs as long as the end result was the same. He wouldn't have even been surprised if he found her using one of her titan-steel blades. He did, however, mind the attitude. "You're in a mood because I spoil you."

"Is that it?" She wasn't even being argumentative. She genuinely wanted to know why she felt so moody and irritated. "It feels like I can't clear my head lately. I hate it. It's annoying." She finished shaving and rinsed the knife off and then poured water over her leg to rinse away any soap residue.

"I  _did_ spoil you. I've been too busy to devote hours of attention to you for a whole two nights in a row and you get an attitude like a spoiled little bitch. I would punish you for it, but I'm wiped out." He untied his cravat and put it down next to the sink.

She thought he was probably right. She told him, "It clears my head when you hurt me. I need it to level me out."

"That's why I'm not going to do it. You're spoiled with how much I hurt you," probably the most ironic sentence he had ever spoken. He thought of something else to threaten her with, "If you keep up your shitty attitude, I'm going to make love to you and it's going to be very slow and very sweet and romantic and you're going to hate it." He gave her an evil smirk.

She set the knife down, but stayed perched on the edge of the tub. She wanted to laugh at the threat, but she was able to stifle it. "I call your bluff. I don't think you even could."

"I could do anything if it were to torture you," he assured her.

She laughed and held up her hands, "No! It's already too romantic!"

He leaned down in front of her and took her foot in his hands, raising it to kiss the inner side of her ankle. Her eyes went wide as he trailed soft, tender kisses up her leg. He kissed her skin so slowly and so gently, it was like he was someone else. Suddenly he drew his hand back, cursing as he looked at it. "What is it?" she asked.

"I think I cut my hand on your foot. Why are your feet so fucking calloused?" He teased her.

She laughed and splashed the bathwater at him. "Living on the street for a year or so without shoes followed by long-ass training runs in ill-fitting boots will do that! Leave my feet alone!"

"Well I can hardly do that now." He grabbed a pumice stone from a basket near the tub and roughly grabbed her ankle and scraped at the heel of her foot with it.

"Fuck!" She started laughing uncontrollably and gasping for air, "That tickles!" She tried to pull her leg out of his grasp, but she lost her balance and fell backwards into the tub. Then he let go. He smiled as she brought her head up above water again looking as angry as a cat would be in the same situation.

Levi reached in and pulled the plug, letting the water drain. He stood up and started unbuttoning his shirt. "Are you going to be long in there? I wanted to take a shower." His deadpan only made her more livid. He loved that look. It almost made him want to relent and spend an hour or two turning that angry look of defiance into one of ecstasy and submission. His cock started to pulse with the increased blood flow as he had warring thoughts in his head of how much fun it would be to punish her severely for being a spoiled little bitch, versus the certainty that doing so would ensure that she would continue to be a spoiled little bitch. She glared at him as she wrung the excess water from her hair. It wasn't really much of a contest. "On second thought, stay in there. You're taking a shower with me." He quickly started the water running and pulled the handle to divert the flow through the shower head.

She shrieked as the water hit her. She sputtered and flailed. "Noooo. I already took two showers today!" She got to her feet, but she stayed in the shower, watching him strip. Her eyes flickered with a combination of hostility and lust.

"If you want to whine, you can go to bed right now," he warned.

She bit her lip. She really hated unnecessary showers, but she also hated the past few days where she ended up in bed before him, falling asleep without so much as a spanking or a scolding – even if it was in French and she didn't understand it. While she tried to make a decision, he turned the hot water up. She stepped back a little, out of the water, and brought a finger to her lips, wrinkling her eyebrows in thought, weighing whether or not it was worth it.

He loved that face. Sometimes he only made it seem like she had options to choose from just so he could see her face while she tried to think when really he'd already made the decision for her. This was one of those times. He stepped over the edge of the tub and stood facing her, directly under the stream of the shower. He closed his eyes and tilted his head back, letting the hot water run over his face.

Erna watched as tiny rivers of water formed and ran down his neck, over his collarbone, in a quick descent over the topography of his skin, jumping over scars and hugging the curves and angles of muscles. It made her feel thirsty. He tilted his head to each side, stretching his neck and shoulders, cracking bones. A stream of water made it past him to burn her skin. She love-hated this. She complained, "The water's too hot."

He opened his eyes and looked at her. "What did I say about whining? Do you want to get out?" He wouldn't actually let her, but he wanted to bring that conflicted expression to her face again. He watched her wrestle with the decision for a few moments before grabbing her around her waist and pulling her into the water, telling her "You'll get used to it," as she whimpered and squirmed.

Her skin quickly turned a light shade of pink. Her face flushed and she grabbed his wrists, trying to loosen his hold on her so she could escape the burning water. He decided to give her a different kind of searing pain to concentrate on. He leaned down and took one of her pink little nipples in his mouth and sucked until she relaxed and stopped trying to get away, then he grazed it with his teeth, making her shudder, which was nice, but he wanted her to scream. He gave her a nip with his teeth and she yelped. She snaked her fingers into his hair, about to try to pull him away, but he clamped his teeth down lightly so that if she resisted or pulled him away she would only be scraping herself with his teeth and causing herself more pain. She relaxed her fingers, closed her eyes, and sighed, "Fuck you."

He smiled a little as he increased the pressure with his teeth until he could hear her sharp intake of breath. He gave the tip of her nipple a playful flick of his tongue and released her, standing up straight and looking down at her indignant face. He observed calmly, "You're like a cat in water. I should get you a collar with a bell."

She narrowed her eyes at him, "Putain de chien sale." –  _(Fucking dirty dog/bastard.)_

His eyes flashed with that sadistic spark. He spun her around to face away from him, bringing a hand to her hair and pulling her head back painfully far as he sunk his teeth into the side of her neck. His other hand squeezed and pinched the nipple that had escaped the attention of his teeth. He tasted blood as his canines broke her skin. He licked the mark he had made as the running water washed away the trickle of blood and he tugged her hair a little harder, making her back and neck arch as he ran his tongue up to her earlobe. Her breathing was quick as he whispered in her ear, "I'll fuck you like a dog if that's what you really want." He left her nipple to trail his fingers down her smooth skin until he reached her clit, playing with it until she was wet with more than just the running water. "Petit enfant gâté." –  _(Spoiled little brat.)_

Erna felt like he was going to break her neck. She couldn't help hyperventilating a little in instinctive fear. She was relieved when he suddenly pushed her forward, though she had to catch herself and put her hands against the wall to avoid cracking her head. He put a hand between her shoulder blades and pushed her down until her body formed almost a right angle. He crouched a little and pressed against her, pushing her into the wall so that she wouldn't lose her balance. His cock slipped in between her thighs and between her lips, brushing over her clit, causing her to moan and cry out, "Ha.. ahh.. Levi.."

"Qu'est-ce que tu veux, ma salope?"  _(What do you want, my slut?)_ He rocked his hips, sliding his cock back and forward again, teasing her with it.

She didn't understand him, but it didn't matter. She pushed back against him, begging for it, "Please, Levi."

He put a hand firmly on her ass, squeezing it while he took his cock in the other and guided it to press against the opening of her tight, wet little cunt. He pressed a little and pulled back, teasing her with the head of his cock until she began murmuring "Please…" over and over. He growled deep in his throat. Simple pleading wasn't good enough. He smacked her ass, making her flinch a little. He hummed and asked her, "Please what? Tell me."

She groaned, frustrated that he was going to make her try to make coherent sentences when she felt like her brain was melting. She tried to just push back against him and take what she wanted, but he pulled his cock away from her, bringing his hand up from her ass to her waist and holding her still. He tapped the head of his cock against her lips, mocking her with it. "Ah, ah, ah… Naughty little whore… Tell me what you need and maybe you can have it."

She sighed at the humiliation of needing to say it, "I  _need_  your cock. Please?" He slid the head over her wet clit and hummed, only teasingly pressing against her to let her know that wasn't good enough. She tried again, "Please fuck me? I need it." She tried to buck against him, but he continued to hold her still.

She sighed and paused, pressing her forehead against the shower wall in defeat. "I need you to use me, hurt me with your cock, treat me like your fuck-toy," she whined desperately. "Please use me or hurt me or fucking tease me and don't let me come, I don't care, I only want to be your pathetic little slave, I only want to exist for your pleasure, whatever form it takes."

He smiled. She really could be eloquent when he pushed her past her point of pride. He liked taking her better when all her composure and vanity was stripped away. "Je veux tu faire hurler,"  _(I want you to scream.)_ he told her darkly before he rewarded her begging by quickly slamming his cock all the way inside her, up to the hilt, pressing against her cervix and making her shudder. Her screams were either a coincidence or she actually understood him. He didn't care which. He fucked her mercilessly, slapping her ass, making her flinch and making her cunt twitch around his cock. The muscles of her arms stiffened, struggling to push back against his thrusts and keep her head from hitting the wall.

"Nnh.. oh fuck.. oh Levi.. Don't stop.." she barely knew what she was saying anymore.

He reached down and pulled her hair, making her arch her back past the point of comfort again. He slammed his cock as deep into her as he could, making her cry out, he held it there as he asked her, "What did you just say?"

It was hard for her to talk with her neck bent back so hard. "P-Please don't stop?" she corrected herself, realizing her mistake too late.

He held his cock still inside her, keeping her arched against him with his hand in her hair, he brought his other hand down to lightly tease her clit. "Spoiled little bitch. Did you want a say in how I fuck you?" She tried to shake her head, but he didn't give her enough slack to move. He tapped a finger against her clit.

Erna couldn't stand it, she tried to writhe against him. He pulled out of her and she whined and whimpered. He tugged her hair, making her hold still. He stopped teasing her clit and slapped her ass with his cock. "So forgetful. Do I really need to remind you that you're just a toy? Your pleasure is only incidental."

She moaned. He brought his hand from her hair to her throat, cutting off her air a little, holding her in the same position. He slammed his cock back inside her, pushing her up on her toes with every thrust inside her heat that rivaled the temperature of the water. "Unh… If I let you come… unh- fuck… it's only to feel your tight little cunt milk my cock…" Her moans were choked out of her as he tightened his grip around her neck, pushing her into his hand with his hips.

He rolled his fingers around her clit, her choked moans became shrill, half-screams. He growled at her, "Fucking take it… dirty, cock-hungry whore…" He felt heat pool in his cock, his balls tightened, but he wouldn't let himself come before her. He kept lightly working her clit, pushing her over the edge, "Take my cock, you horny little slut…"

It probably wouldn't have mattered if he weren't touching her clit at all, his words were what really made her come. Her whole body shook, her hot cunt squeezing around him, trying to suck him in further. He released his hold on her neck and she gasped for air, moaning with every exhale, shaking with aftershocks of her intense climax. He held out as long as he could and let her ride it out on his cock before he had to pull out. He leaned back, grunting and sighing heavily as his cock twitched and spurted cum on her ass, some of it pooling in the cute little dimples at the small of her back. The water quickly washed it all away. She used what little strength she had left to control her descent as her knees buckled.

Levi bent down and lifted her up, turning her around and holding her to stand against him. He nuzzled into her wet hair. She pressed her face against his chest, feeling it rise and fall with deep, ragged breaths and listening to his heart beat hard and fast. He whispered, "You know I only say those things for your benefit…"

She didn't understand the tone of his voice. It was totally new to her. It wasn't his normal deadpan. It was something like sincere sentimentality. It was confusing to hear any emotion in it at all, so it took her a moment to even respond, "I know…"

She pushed away a little, looked him in the eyes. They were full of something like caring, then they flashed with mischief before he added, "Except when I call you a whore – that I mean."

Erna smiled and teased him, "Don't be so sweet. It's gross."

Levi kissed her forehead and then gave her ass a swift smack, "Get out of here so I can actually get clean." He grabbed the soap as she stepped out over the edge of the tub.

Erna wrapped herself up in a towel before going to the bedroom, parting with, "Vieil homme sale."  _(Dirty old man.)_

He called after her, "Salope! Pute! Minet!"  _(Bitch. Whore. Cunt.)_  Then, "Je ne te l'enseignemente du francais." He translated into English so that she would know, "I'm not teaching you any more French."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As you may have noticed in the previous chapter, I keep flirting with the idea of groupsex/sharing/voyeur!Levi. I want that to happen, but cannot decide on the configuration, i.e. what character/s to include and how and why.


	19. In Media Res

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When I have trouble writing I make guidelines for myself like a theme or a specific set of restrictions. This time I did a chapter of scenes that start in the middle of conversations. It turned out to be more fun than I thought. I might write this way forever. (The chapter title is Latin for In the Middle of Things.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: There is a "Mean Girls" reference somewhere in here. I could not help myself. I'm terrible.  
> Also, Mike looks out a window, as he is wont to do.

"I'm as shocked as you are." Erna tried to make her face at least mildly surprised so the statement would be believable.

The supply officer held up one of her two gas canisters in wondering disbelief, looking for the point of the leak. "How bizarre… Both of them?" He put it down and picked up the other one.

Erna shrugged. "Yeah. I can't think of what happened. I mean they did get knocked around a little on the last reconnaissance mission, but…" She knew exactly what happened. She went into the tack room of the stable early in the morning, took the hammer and nails they use to shoe the horses and made tiny punctures in each of her gas canisters. They were running on fumes anyway since her last excursion over the wall.

The poor man brought a hand to the back of his head and groaned. "Now we have to check all of these," motioning towards the hundreds of spare gas cans. "At least we didn't fill them yet."

A familiar ginger-haired girl quickly brought her two new canisters. "Here, Miss Raban, I checked and filled them already."

"Tch. Don't call me that." Erna scolded her quietly. She tucked one canister under her arm and held the other in her hand.

"Sorry! I forgot." Erna watched the girl. There was a slight twitch in her shoulder and arm, she was about to salute her, but she remembered and kept her arms at her sides.

Erna knew the canisters were fine, but something about Kallie made her neck bristle – made her want to fuck with the girl. She tapped the canister under her arm with her fist. "You're sure they're fine?" she raised an eyebrow at Kallie.

"Hai!" the girl fought the urge to salute again.

"Because if they're not, you'll have my death on your hands."

Now the girl was starting to look nervous, second-guessing herself. "I- I'm sure…"

"Are you?"

Kallie shifted her weight slightly from one foot to the other. She wavered for a moment, but then her nervousness ebbed away and was replaced by a look of resolve. "I'm sure. You can count on me!"

Erna shrugged, "Good." The supply officer was satisfied and walked away to order others under him to start checking everything. They were already too busy with getting wagons ready for the next mission. They would probably be working into the night. Erna didn't feel the slightest bit of guilt over it.

The girl kept standing there as if she were waiting for Erna to dismiss her, like she was a higher ranking officer. It irritated her. She lifted one of the gas canisters as if she were inspecting it. She didn't look at Kallie as she addressed her, "So this is where they keep you…"

She answered excitedly, "Hai! For now at least. I'm going to be in one of the wagons on the next mission." There was a vague sense of pride in her voice.

Erna continued to pretend to be inspecting the gas canisters she'd been given. "At least you'll be relatively safe. Wagons are well-protected. Erwin values cargo over human lives." It was maybe a slight exaggeration… but only slight, she thought.

The girl stared at her, mouth open and speechless. That made Erna feel satisfied. She turned and walked out of the supply depot without another word.

* * *

 

"But I'm soooo bored…" Erna whined and dramatically threw her arms folded on Erwin's desk, laying her head on them as if she were dying of boredom.

"Take a book." Erwin nodded at the book shelves that lined one of the walls of the office. He was too busy to play games. There was another reconnaissance mission tomorrow, this time it was more involved because they were stocking a new supply point. Every member who was going had the day off, excluding those of higher ranks who were busier than ever, hence the girl's boredom.

"Just one game and then I'll fuck off."

Erwin looked up. It was strange seeing her out of uniform. She was in a long, dark grey cotton tee with a deep v-neck, white three-quarter leggings, and plain sandals. He didn't think he had ever seen her in casual clothes. He smirked to himself as he thought the shirt and leggings made her look like a tiny, cute, female version of Mike. Until she gave him a death stare… definitely more like Levi. He told her firmly, "I can't."

She groaned and put her head down on the desk. He got back to work. A few seconds later Levi stormed in, laid a sheet of paper and his palm on the desk over top of what Erwin was working on, and leaned in close to his face saying, "This is bullshit."

Erna took no interest, resigned that it was more stuff she didn't understand. Everyone was largely being kept in the dark as to what the whole purpose of the recon was.

Erwin was unfazed. "I'm sorry you feel that way." He didn't even look up.

"If we're going to recon two checkpoints, let us take the supplies for both of them."

"You know that's too much to ask. You've only checked the first one. The second one could turn out to be non-viable  _or_ the whole formation could be decimated somehow and then I'm out that much more supplies that I need here. We're already stretched thin as it is." Erwin explained.

"If it's non-viable, we improvise and stow the shit somewhere else. It's bullshit to only take the inventory for one supply point if we have to go to the second one anyway. You're -," Levi was about to go on with a list of reasons that Erwin was an asshole, but the Commander brought his hand up for him to stop.

Erwin looked at Erna whose head was still on the desk. "What do you think?"

She looked up, still resting her chin on the desk like a petulant child. "I'll tell you if you play one game with me."

"Don't let the succubus negotiate with you. It's a shitty habit." Levi gave her a light smack on the back of her head.

"One quick game if you tell me what you honestly think  _and_  it's a good idea." Erwin had noticed by now that she sometimes lied or made herself seem less intelligent than she was if it was to her manipulative advantage.

"One game just for telling you, two games if it's a good idea," she demanded. Then she let out a deep pitiable sigh, "I have fuck-all to do today."

Erwin was about to respond, but Levi took a fistful of her hair and pulled her head back, making the girl wince and hiss. "Don't be a brat. If you're bored, I have plenty of cleaning for you to do." He pulled her head up until she was sitting straight in the chair, then he let go and gave her a light smack, "Out with it."

She rubbed her head where he'd pulled her hair and smacked her. "If you can't agree, just compromise and split it down the middle. Take the full amount of supplies for the first check point and half the supplies for the second. Then take half for the second and the full amount for the third on the next run. We have to stop at all of them anyway, but we get everything stocked in two runs instead of three and Erwin loses less inventory if we're," she used air quotes here, " _decimated somehow._ " She crossed her arms and scowled at Erwin. She disliked the attention that came from having ideas. She only wanted to be left alone and fly under the radar. "Can I get the board now?"

Erwin looked at Levi, "Can you live with that?"

Levi nodded. It was an elegant solution. He looked down at Erna, his facial expression didn't change, but his voice was slightly huskier, "You're sexier when you're smart."

She shrugged. She disliked the compliment. She didn't want to be smart. Having ideas meant she was responsible if her ideas failed.

Erwin sighed, but it was worth losing an hour to play chess with her – it was an hour that would have been wasted arguing with Levi anyway if she had come up with nothing. "You can get the board," he nodded towards the shelf of the bookcase where it resided.

Erna stood up and turned to get it, but was whipped back around almost off her feet as Levi grabbed her wrist and pulled her along, telling Erwin, "She doesn't have time." As he pulled her out the door, he told her, "Come on, you can stay under the desk and suck my cock while I work."

* * *

 

"Why don't you just stop being a pussy and tell them?" Erna sat cross-legged on the floor of Levi's living room, staring at the chess board on the coffee table, so it was unclear whether her question was directed towards Armin or Jean.

Letting Levi drag her back to his office had turned out to be a bad and impulsive decision. He had kicked her out less than two minutes after he came in her mouth and she was left with nothing to do again. So she'd knocked on Armin & Jean's door to see if Armin would play chess with her if she could steal Mike's set. Armin had answered the door after she waited for a minute, completely flushed and flustered. Jean had been in the background, wearing a smug grin and totally casually and unashamedly pulling his shirt back on. She figured they were finished since Armin readily agreed to hang out. Jean insisted on tagging along like they were joined at the hip.

Armin had one of the comfy armchairs pulled up to the coffee table and was leaning over, elbows on his thighs, chin rested in his hands, concentrating on the game, but he answered her anyway, "I will when Jean's ready."

Jean was sprawled out on the couch, feet off of the cushions after Erna had warned him about it. She'd also made them take their shoes off at the door, telling them bluntly that if they didn't Levi would make her sleep on the floor.

Erna clicked her tongue, "I wasn't calling you a pussy. I was talking to Jean. He's a pussy. You should definitely leave him if he doesn't have the balls to tell Eren and Mikasa soon," she was only half-teasing. Even though she didn't really have room to criticize, being the one who tried to hide her own relationship for so long.

Jean turned his head to glare at her. Armin laughed. "It's understandable. They  _are_ overprotective. And they've both always butted heads with Jean. But I know they'd get over it once they saw how happy he makes me."

Jean loved how patient and sweet and understanding Armin was. He couldn't ask for someone more perfect. He smiled and stood up, going behind Armin's chair and draping his arms around him, sweetly kissing the top of his head. Erna pretended she was about to vomit. Jean caressed Armin's hair as he moved his queen and said, "Checkmate."

Erna narrowed her eyes, scanning the pieces. He was right. She pouted. "Boo, you whore." She hated losing. It at least wasn't as bad as playing with Mike. She'd won one game out of three so far. She got up on her knees, leaning over the table and setting the pieces out again.

Armin tried hard to ignore Jean nuzzling his ear. He asked Erna, "Why don't you sit down?" nodding at the big, comfy armchair behind her.

"I'm not allowed on the furniture," Erna answered as though that were a totally normal thing.

Jean's tongue flitted along the curve of Armin's ear, making him blush and squirm in his chair. Erna rolled her eyes at them. Levi came through the door, a folder and clipboard tucked under his arm and a carafe of tea in his hand. Jean shot straight up, as if Armin's skin were a flame that suddenly burned him. He and Armin both looked at the man wide-eyed as he gave them a passing glance before kicking off his boots. Erna didn't even look up from setting up the chess pieces.

Levi asked her, "Why are there filthy brats in my apartment?" as he set the folder and carafe down on the coffee table next to her, not even pausing for her answer before moving through the door to the hallway that separated the living room and bedroom.

She called after him, "I live here too!" She wouldn't go so far as to say it was her apartment too. He would probably punish her for claiming ownership over anything. "And you said I could bring people back here."

He shouted from the bedroom as he gathered a tea cup and saucer and a pen. "I said you could bring people back here to fuck you while I watched."

Armin's face turned red. He would never be used to Levi's blunt crassness. Erna rolled her eyes and sighed, asking in a completely bored and obligatory tone of voice, "Do either of you want to fuck me?"

Armin's face burned brighter. Jean gave her a snide smirk, not as easily embarrassed as Armin, "I did once, but I'm over it."

Erna narrowed her grey eyes at him as she crossed her legs under her again, having finished setting out the pieces. "Ew. As if I would touch you anyway with your weird face. I'd make out with your boy toy though." She winked at Armin. She found lately that she had a growing fondness for making people uncomfortable. Perhaps she harbored a small amount of social sadism along with her sexual masochism.

Jean put a possessive arm around Armin, but quickly retracted it again when Levi came back in from the bedroom. Levi rolled his eyes, "Relax Kirschtein. It's abundantly clear that you're buggering Arlert even without the disgusting public displays of affection."

Jean glared at Erna, thinking she had told Levi. Erna was watching Armin's face, fascinated by how red it could get. Armin was watching the floor. Erna felt Jean's eyes boring into her and looked up. She quickly realized what he thought and she scoffed, "I didn't tell anyone… Okay, I  _may_  have told Erwin, but he doesn't count."

Levi poured himself some tea. "I babysat you brats for at least four years. You think you're so subtle when you're being painfully obvious." He nodded at Jean, "You look at Arlert like he's some kind of golden god on a fucking pedestal." Armin smiled. But Levi wasn't done, "And you with those big, fuck-me-blue eyes."

They both just looked at Levi in shock. He crossed his legs and sipped his tea, holding his cup over the saucer by the rim, sounding bored, "Don't look so innocent. It's not like you invented sex."

Erna shot him a look over her shoulder, "I thought you were supposed to be busy."

"And I thought I could take a fucking break in my own home without being exposed to brats fawning over each other like horny teenagers and your shitty attitude." He returned her scowl. "You know you're not even allowed to wear clothes in the apartment. You're lucky I don't make you strip right now."

"Stop trying to scare my friends away." This would have been a record-worthy event if anyone had noticed, it was the first time she admitted she had any friends. It was also the first time she stuck her tongue out at Levi, before saying, "Grossier chien sale." -  _(Rude bastard.)_

He responded in English, "It's rude to speak other languages around people who don't understand, besides the fact that you're playing a two-person game when you have more than one guest." Then, in contradiction with what he just told her, he added in French, "Putain barbare."  _\- (Uncivilized/savage fucking whore.)_

Jean and Armin stayed put, more afraid to attempt to leave than to stay. Erna shrugged at him, sighing, "This is the only game I know."

Levi observed her darkly in silence for a minute as he sipped his tea. Finally he said, "There's a deck of cards in my desk." He gave her a kick. "Fetch."

Erna sprang to her feet and bounced out of the room. Jean stayed standing behind Armin's chair, he didn't feel safe enough to return to sit on the couch. Armin bit his lip and concentrated on the stone floor, wondering if it was possible to disappear into it.

Levi put his tea cup on the table and picked up the folder and clipboard. He turned sideways in the chair, hanging his legs over the side as he clicked his pen and began writing. It was incredibly awkward, but on some level Jean and Armin were exceedingly grateful that he didn't want to try to make small talk.

After a minute, Erna came back. She tossed the box of cards to Jean from the doorway. He caught them and sat down on the couch again as Erna returned to her spot on the floor. He cut the deck and began shuffling. He looked across the coffee table at her as he riffled the cards, "Do you know how to play poker?"

"I don't know how to play anything."

"You can't play with only three people anyway," Armin reminded them.

"Oh yeah," Jean set the deck down and tried to think of something else to play.

Erna turned around and tried to pout at Levi. He read her mind. "I don't have time."

"Please?" she made a ridiculous attempt at fluttering her eyelashes at him, but he wasn't even looking at her.

"I'm busy. It takes too long to play, and besides there's no point to poker if you're not gambling, so unless you want to play strip poker…" He flipped the page he was reading.

Erna gave Jean a questioning look because she didn't know what 'strip poker' was. Jean shook his head and mouthed 'no' at her.

Erna looked back at Levi. "Something else then? Please?"

"I said 'no,' and if you keep asking, I'm going to bend you over the couch and beat your ass red."

Erna's shoulders slumped. She turned back around to Armin and Jean and shrugged. Armin offered, "We can play go fish."

Levi made a frustrated groan as he moved his legs from over the arm of the chair, put his feet on the floor and reached for the deck. It was unconscionable to let them do something so lame. He started dealing the cards out, "I'll teach you Hearts. One game, then I need to get back to work."

* * *

 

"I'm sure she'll be fine." The veterinary officer reassured Erna as they stood outside Raven's stall. It was only the early afternoon, but the horses had been called inside as it started to rain. Raven pawed the ground and bucked in her stall. "The cut's completely healed. The hostility towards humans we can't do anything about."

"No, that's fine. I like her this way." Erna extended her hand out over the stall door and fed Raven some carrot pieces. When she'd eaten all of them and figured out that she wasn't getting any more, she kicked the wall and charged the door, rearing up and then coming down and bucking.

They stood in silence for a moment before the vet asked, sounding incredulous, "Forgive me for asking, but is it true that Commander Erwin delayed the scheduled reconnaissance missions for this horse?"

* * *

 

"Just stand out here and tell me if anyone's coming." Sasha told Connie as she picked the lock on the kitchen pantry.

Connie nodded as she slipped through the door. He stood back against the wall and whistled a tune very inconspicuously, he thought. She was in there a minute, maybe two, before he started to get worried. Normally she would be in and out in less than thirty seconds.

She was so quiet that he couldn't hear her in there at all, that was why she was so good at this. He tilted his head towards the door, and said through the side of his mouth, "Don't take too much. They'll notice and we'll have to run laps again." No answer. He looked around and listened. He doubted anyone would be coming anyway. Everyone was so busy getting ready for tomorrow and the kitchen staff had already served dinner and cleaned up. He quickly slipped through the door and closed it.

Sasha was stuffing a sack with bread, potatoes, carrots, and whatever else there was a large enough stock of. The sack looked like it was filled with at least ten pounds of food and she wasn't stopping. She barely even noticed him come in. "Sash, that's way too much!" Connie stage whispered.

Sasha continued stuffing the bag, "It's fine. We're leaving early in the morning, long before breakfast. No one will notice it's missing until we're gone. I  _can't_  go out on a mission without extra food! How will we snack?"

"We're going to be gone two days, three tops…" Connie murmured. Then he thought about that for a second and switched gears, "… Are you sure that's enough?"

Sasha popped open the top of a crate, when she saw the contents, her eyes widened and her jaw dropped. "Connie…"

"What?" He walked over and looked down.

"It's MEA-," she started to scream, but he clamped a hand over her mouth, shushing her. She whispered very excitedly, "It's meat!" The crate contained a variety of dried meats.

Connie looked at it in disbelief. Then he looked at Sasha. He reached over and grabbed the sack, holding it open. She didn't miss a beat and started grabbing handfuls of jerky and throwing it in.

"Grab more venison," Connie told her. There was so much they could even afford to be picky.

"My favorite!" Sasha squealed.

When they'd pilfered about a quarter of what was in there, Connie grabbed Sasha around the waist and pushed her back against a pile of sacks of potatoes as he pulled her down for a frantic kiss. He pushed her shirt up, kissing her soft, round tits as she pulled it off the rest of the way. He stood up and quickly removed his shirt and unclasped her bra. "You're so hot when you're stealing food."

Sasha giggled. She let her bra fall off and she reached for a baguette. She licked one end of it before trailing it suggestively down between her tits and over her stomach.

Connie's cock twitched. "Fuck that's hot," he groaned. He quickly leaned down, grabbing needy fistfuls of her breasts as he kissed them, carefully flicking her nipples between his fingers. If he were forced to choose a favorite part of her it would have to be her tits, they were so heavy and soft and perfect. He squeezed them together and licked a long trail up the space between them.

Sasha's skin broke out in a full body blush. She could still be so shy about sex, which Connie only thought made her more alluring. He loved when she blushed and looked at him with those big, brown doe eyes. He didn't care that he always had to be the one to initiate, that was more than fine, he was eager enough for both of them. He sucked on a nipple, let it go with a pop, and turned his attention to the other one.

"Connieeeee," Sasha whined as she reached for his belt buckle. He delayed burying his face in her chest for a second to give her a questioning look. She blushed and averted her eyes to the bulge in his pants, pulling him closer between her legs by his belt and quickly unbuckling it, conquering her shyness for the sake of maintaining her standing record of fifty-seven successful pantry robberies without getting caught red-handed. "Hurry up before we get caught."

"Right, sorry!" he pushed her knee-length skirt up as she unbuttoned his pants, he lifted her ass, quickly pulling her panties down her thighs as she lifted her knees, ankles together so he could slide them off completely. She went back to fumbling with the buttons, but he took her hands, gently pushing them away so he could kneel between her long legs. He lightly sucked at her swollen lips and darted his tongue out to tease her clit.

Sasha giggled – his stubble tickled between her thighs. She clutched his shoulders and tried to pull him up, "Connieee, there's no time."

He hated that she was right. He  _could_ be fast, that was easy. But he preferred to draw things out and make her come five times in the course of an hour or two. They fit perfectly together that way. He was giving and she had no shame about taking and being greedy. He gave her one more long lick and she made a half-successful attempt at stifling a moan.

Connie got up from his knees and pushed his pants and briefs down just enough to have them out of the way. He leaned over Sasha's body, capturing her mouth in a fiery kiss. She moaned into his lips as the head of his cock brushed over her slick pussy, sliding up lightly, getting the underside of his shaft coated in her wetness.

Her fingers clutched the back of his neck. She bucked her hips, begging him with her body to just put it in already. His hand came down. He teased her with his fingertips a little, getting them drenched before giving his shaft one long stroke, getting it coated and guiding his cock to push inside her, slowly at first. He broke their kiss to straighten up again, to be able to look down at her whole body, which made her blush again, which made him lose his mind.

"Fuck, Sash…" He whispered under his breath. He quickly plunged his cock into her up to the base. She gasped and then moaned as he began rocking in and out of her. She was always loud. Normally that was okay, but…

Connie didn't want to muffle her cries with a kiss again, he wanted to be able to look down and see her tits jiggle and bounce as he thrust in and out of her. He tried shushing her, but her eyes were closed and her mind was past the point of listening.

He was desperate. He didn't want to get caught either. Without breaking his rhythm, he reached for the baguette she had teased him with tore off a piece of it. As her mouth opened to let out another loud moan, he stuffed it with the bread, instantly giving her an apologetic look as her eyes opened in surprise. But her lips curved into a smile. She sunk her teeth into the chunk of baguette and kept moaning, looking up at him with a feral, hungry spark in her eyes.

The image pushed him over the edge. He kept one hand on her waist as he lifted one of her legs with the other, pulling her ankle up to his shoulder, lifting her ass off the potato sacks, pushing the other thigh to the side with his hips and pushing deeper inside of her, angling to find that sweet spot that would make her come if he hit it right.

She stretched her leg up straight, thigh against his stomach, calf pushing into his shoulder. Her long legs were flexible like a dancer. He leaned into it, stretching out her muscles, turning his head to kiss her calf as he lost himself in the feeling of her warmth.

Sasha stiffened and her back arched as she started to come. Her pussy walls started contracting and Connie brought his hand from her waist to lightly brush and pet her clit, making her whole body convulse in a long, intense, drawn-out multiple orgasm. It took every ounce of self-control and concentration he possessed to wait for her to finish. He only pulled out when she twitched and jumped as if his cock were a cattle prod, signaling that her climax was over and her clit was oversensitive. He didn't have time, inclination, or foresight to think about how he was going to come and consequently he just spilled onto the stone floor. At that point he really couldn't care anyway.

He wanted to collapse next to her, but they'd been in there too long already. He heard a muffled giggle come from Sasha. He looked down at her and she brought both hands to the piece of baguette in her mouth, holding it as she tore it with her teeth and began chewing. He pulled his pants back up and smirked at her.

* * *

 

"I don't care  _what_ the fuck you do to me, I am  _not_ going back down there!" Erna put the carafe on the coffee table, empty of the tea Levi had ordered her to bring him. "And I'm never eating anything that comes out of that kitchen again!"

Levi gave her an unimpressed look, "You're not making sense. What's gotten into you?" She was a spoiled little brat, through some fault of his own, but she wasn't normally histrionic and nonsensical like she was being right now.

Erna crossed her arms, hands clutching her shoulders. "Horrible things…" She shook her head quickly like she was trying to make memories fly out of it. "I need to take a shower." She took the hem of her t-shirt in her fingertips and started pulling it over her head as she walked back towards the bedroom and disappeared.

He thought about beating the shit out of her for defying an order, but he truly didn't have time - unlike the other times where he just told himself he didn't have time and then found time anyway. Besides, she seemed genuinely traumatized… her taking a shower without him forcing her was proof that something was up. He sighed. He still needed tea.

Levi picked up the carafe and went down to the kitchen, put a teapot on the stove and waited for the water to boil. Connie and Sasha were gone by then, so he didn't hear any of the noises from the pantry that had so deeply disturbed Erna when she'd been down there minutes ago.

* * *

 

"Are you taking that with you?" Mike asked Erna as she took another sip from the mug in her hand. Levi had woken her up early before the sun even rose so that she could go make herself some coffee before they left and not "be a psychotic fucking bitch," or as he put it, "Putain salope psychotique," further expanding her grasp of French vocabulary.

She calmly looked around. Everyone else was mounted up and ready.  _Shit._  She hated to not finish coffee. She took one last swig and dumped the remainder out on the ground. She had wanted to fill her waterskin with coffee, but Levi had reminded her that would only be fine if she enjoyed passing out from dehydration. She left the empty mug on the ground, not wanting to smash it or take it with her.

Raven pawed the ground impatiently next to her. The stall rest and restriction to light work made her crazier than usual. Erna reached for her reins and gave Mike a look. He knelt down, cupped his hands, gave her a boost up into the saddle. He was good at wordless communication. He went and got on his own horse. Erna wondered how the Survey Corps even had one big enough for him. It was probably a special draft cross.

Erna quickly ran over numbers in her head as Raven pranced underneath her. Three wagons, center. Four squads surrounding in a sort of diamond shape and one squad riding in the center close to the wagons with spare horses. Forty people altogether, seven of which she was more immediately responsible for… or just in closer proximity to, being in their squad, eight people who she had grown attached to and would miss if they were killed, and one person, leading the formation, who she was pretty sure she couldn't find the will to live without. She shook those thoughts away, not finding them helpful.

She made an overhead map in her head of the formation, drawing lines to points she could get to and erasing points that would be pointless to try and reach from where she would be. That was better. Mike rode close to her telling her just before Levi called the order to move out, "Don't respond to red flares. Only black."

Logically she knew this already, but it helped to hear it again. It was hard to see red flares and do nothing while she waited for the green.

* * *

 

"What happened to your hands?" Mikasa gave Erna a blank look. Erna was blowing on her palms. The pads of her fingers were blistered from her reins. She'd needed to keep a ridiculously tight hold of them to keep Raven in formation for the first ten miles before she settled down. Every muscle in her upper arms ached.

Erna held her palms faced out at Mikasa, who winced in sympathy. "That horse is going to kill me before any titan gets the chance," she joked. She contemplated her hands. "Or at least if a titan kills me it will probably be her fault. I don't even know if I can hold a blade like this."

Mikasa took her wrist and examined her hand more closely. She let go. "You should get that wrapped up." She gave Erna a somber look.

"Yeah," Erna agreed. She wondered what it would be like to endure Mikasa's overprotection full-time the way Eren and Armin had to. She hoped she'd never find out.

On cue, Mikasa asked, "Where's Armin?"

First Erna told her what she really wanted to know. "He's fine." Erna had seen him as soon as they'd reached the abandoned town that would become the second checkpoint they were setting up for god knows what. That was where they were now. "Not a scratch on him."

Mikasa seemed slightly comforted, but not by much. She didn't trust anything and she didn't like not having Armin directly under her protection and in her squad. But Erna couldn't tell her exactly where he was right now. After everyone fanning out to do a quick check that the abandoned town was safe enough, dismounting, and tying the horses, they had pretty much scattered. Most people were scouting out which houses and buildings were intact enough to function as overnight barracks. Sleeping arrangements were pretty much first come first serve. Erna didn't care. She was sure Levi wouldn't let her have a say in where she would sleep. She watched people scurry from building to building and thought that sometimes it was nice to not have choices.

Her eyes found Sasha and Connie. They were at least going about it smartly, using their 3DMG to get up and stand against the second story walls of nicer houses and look inside windows and see if the bedrooms looked comfy. Mikasa stalked off to find Armin. Erna didn't tell her that she thought Mikasa was too overprotective of Armin and that he could take care of himself. Mikasa was scary when it came to her friends.

Erna looked around at the town landscape and had an image of what it would be like if there were still people there. They were in the town center. Cobblestone streets met in a large circle with a dry fountain in the middle. As far as supply points went, it was pretty nice. It looked like the people had received the message about the breach in Shiganshina in time and were evacuated without incident. Normally in towns like these there would be rubble and dried blood splatter, no bodies. Titans never left bodies. But there wasn't any of that. Any buildings that were falling apart were strictly suffering from wear and tear and inattention over the years. The wagons were being unloaded in front of a courthouse that was now being turned into a storage shed for emergency supplies that could be gotten to in event it was needed. It was chosen because it was the biggest building. It would be the easiest to spot in a hurry.

"Oi brats!" Levi yelled from near the fountain where he was standing with Hange and Mike, "Don't waste your gas!" He was yelling at Sasha and Connie, who quickly descended the wall they were currently on. He gave them a look that said they were an utter embarrassment.

His eyes fixed on Erna, "Why the fuck are you standing there?" Erna simply shrugged at him. He rubbed the bridge of his nose. "Go secure a perimeter if you don't have anything to do." She flitted up to a rooftop and disappeared.

Levi turned to Mike. "Do you smell running water anywhere?" Mike shook his head. Levi scowled, "I fucking hate camping."

Hange was cheerful. "It's hardly camping. A lot of the houses are in good condition."

"If you call being dusty and full of shit 'good condition.'"

Hange teased Levi, her voice cheerful and full of sarcasm, "Do you want to try to go back to headquarters when they finish unloading? Navigate in the dark?"

Levi looked up at Mike, "Can we do that?" The stoic man shook his head again. Levi sat on the edge of the cement fountain. "Shit."

* * *

 

"Close your eye and hold still…" Armin was sitting on Jean's lap. They and the others were around one of several small fires they'd made to provide some light in the town overnight. Erna had just come back from exploring the rooftops, looking for titans but not finding any, and Armin was pressing a piece of clean gauze to the bruised skin around Jean's left eye. Mikasa was glaring at them from across the fire.

Erna walked up and whistled at Jean. "You look like lost a boxing match to a titan."

"I may as well have," Jean hissed as Armin reached into the first aid kit, swabbed some gauze in alcohol and pressed it to a cut.

Erna played dumb. She didn't want to know what Mikasa would do to her if she let on that she'd already known about them and hadn't said anything. "What happened?"

Connie answered her, "You missed it. Mikasa caught them making out behind one of the houses. Then everybody lost their minds for like twenty minutes. Now we're over it… Well, except those two," he motioned towards Mikasa and Eren. Mikasa's hands were balled into fists and her jaw was visibly clenched. Eren looked too shocked and confused to be angry.

Erna tried to sound surprised. "That's wild…"

"If you hurt him, I'll kill you." Mikasa said quietly. Erna thought she was probably the scariest when she was quiet, but she didn't know. She had never heard Mikasa yell. She couldn't really imagine it.

"Mikasa…" Armin's tone was scolding. He was probably the most angry Erna had ever seen him, which was still not much. He didn't even turn around to look at her as he tended to Jean's eye, "… Don't talk about me like I'm not here."

Mikasa didn't apologize. She just switched to addressing Armin instead of Jean, "If he hurts you, I'll kill him."

"… So… um…" Erna didn't want to do anything to continue this line of conversation. She did want to find out about food and maybe water. She looked down at Sasha, "Did you guys eat already? Is there anything left?"

"I don't think so." Sasha said dismissively. Connie elbowed her. "Oh fine!" Sasha reached into her pack and pulled out a carrot and held it out to Erna.

Erna gave her and her single carrot a cold look. "I know you have more than that."

"Nope. That's all that's left. You never eat anyway, your stomach is probably so shrunken this should be enough."

"I  _heard_ you two in the pantry last night. Give me a roll and I won't tell Levi." She wouldn't tell him either way, it wasn't really any of her business, but she was hungry.

"You two have more food?!" Jean opened his eye to glare at them over Armin's shoulder.

Sasha groaned and shoved a roll into Erna's outstretched palm as she muttered curse words and self-pity under her breath. She opened her pack and started handing out more food to everyone.

Mikasa didn't accept anything more. She gave Sasha a serious stare, forgetting for a moment about the primary object of her hatred, "Levi's going to find out anyway when we get back. That's too much food for the kitchen staff to not notice it missing."

Sasha's lip quivered. "I couldn't help myself!"

Erna snatched a bunch of carrots from Sasha's pack, "I'm taking these too." Sasha whimpered at the loss of more food. She closed her pack and clutched it to her chest.

Erna asked, "Where's Levi?"

Sasha circled her arms around one of Erna's legs and pleaded dramatically, "Don't tell him!"

Erna pushed Sasha away, "I wasn't going to anyway! Stop being hysterical!"

Connie pulled Sasha into his arms and stroked her hair soothingly. He nodded over his shoulder, "Courthouse." Sasha buried her face into his neck. "Sash, it's okay. Relax."

"I hate running…" Erna heard Sasha whimper as she walked away.

* * *

 

"How many wagons would we have with us if we took the inventory for the next checkpoint and just went straight on from there?" Levi leaned back in his chair, looking at the map on the table. They'd set it on what used to be the table for defendants. Hange sat in the other chair, but Mike stood looking out one of the windows.

Hange didn't bother to do the math. "It doesn't matter, Erwin would never go for it."

Levi muttered under his breath, "Tight-assed prick." He asked Hange again, "How many?"

Hange's eyes looked upward while she was thinking. She silently counted on her fingers. "Probably about twelve… maybe fifteen…" Levi arched an eyebrow at her. She explained, "I'm still trying to convince him to let me take more cannons."

"We can get it all done in one run. The more times we leave headquarters and make return trips, the more lives we risk."

"It would be a lot to do it all at once." Hange sighed and leaned back in her chair, putting her boots on the table. Normally Levi would scold her for that, but he didn't care. He wasn't going to touch the table. It had taken ten minutes just to get the chair he was sitting in free enough of dust for him to be okay with it.

"You have any thoughts on this, Bloodhound?"

Mike didn't turn from the window. "Hange's right. Erwin wouldn't go for it." He declined to say whether or not it was a good idea.

Levi bristled, "And we just toe the line." The courthouse door was pushed open and he turned to see Erna. She was chewing the last of a roll. Before she could say anything, he waved her away, "Aller au lit." –  _(Go to bed.)_

"It's early." Erna protested after she finished chewing and swallowed.

"You're on morning watch. You have to be up by 3am."

Erna didn't complain. Waking up early didn't bother her. "Where should I sleep?"

"Do I have to hold your hand for everything?"

Erna shrugged. She guessed that  _not_ wanting to order her around was how he expressed himself when he was in a bad mood. She turned and began to leave.

"Wait," Levi got up from his chair, changing his mind, "I'm going with you."

"It's okay, I don't care where I sleep."

"I do." He took a gas lamp and picked his cloak up off the chair. "I want to know where to find you." He walked over and pushed her out the door ahead of him.

After they were gone, Hange folded up the map on the table. "They're cute in a scary, angry kind of way, don't you think?"

Mike only shrugged.

* * *

 

"Why so far? What are you looking for? We passed like twenty perfectly good houses." Erna said as she followed behind Levi. He'd been walking in silence for almost ten minutes.

He kept walking as he said, "Rich people tend to live away from town centers. They can afford to be secluded. Look for signs of expensive landscaping."

"Like what?"

"Overgrown roses, boxwood bushes, shit like that."

Erna looked around, "… What do those look like?"

Levi stopped walking and turned around to look at her. He face-palmed as he said, "Really?" He turned and started walking again, "You were a servant in a rich household for how many years? How do you not know this shit?"

"I was a house servant. I know how to polish silver really well. I didn't go outside. I'm not a fucking gardener," she replied.

"That's why you're so pale."

"So? Why are you so pale?" She stuck her tongue out at him behind his back. "And how do you know so much anyway?"

He ignored her question. "Make yourself useful and check front doors. They'll be locked if there's anything worth taking."

Erna nodded and gave him a mock salute as she turned on her heel to check the nearest house to her right.

Levi walked over to the gate of a wrought-iron fence surrounding one large house with a completely overgrown lawn. He hit the rusted lock on the gate with the butt of one of his 3DMG handgrips and it crumbled apart allowing the gate to squeak open. He locked a blade into the handgrip and used it as a machete to cut away overgrown bushes in the way of the path to the door.

He walked up the steps to a large, solid mahogany door. The steps were a good sign. A high foundation usually meant there was a cellar. He gave the door handle a try, but it was locked. He kicked the door in on its rusty hinges easily and it fell to the floor. He stepped over it and held the lantern up, revealing a foyer paneled in rich wood. Dry, dead flowers in expensive vases were displayed on antique tables near the doors.

He heard Erna's boots padding up the steps behind him. He opened the door of the gas lantern in his hand and took a candle out of a candelabrum in the window. He lit it and handed it to her. She accepted it silently, used it to light the other two candles stuck in the candelabrum, and looked around before asking, "Why would you lock the door if you knew titans were coming and you were being evacuated?"

"People are greedy pigs. Even if they can't take their shit, they want to make sure no one else can have it either." He walked away through the archway to the left. "Check around. Look for a cellar."

Erna took the candelabrum. She asked after him before beginning to search, "Why?"

"So I can tie you up and leave you there."

There was a long pause. "… I can't tell if you're serious or if you're fucking with me," she called out. He didn't answer her.

Levi found the cellar door first, off of the kitchen. As he went down the steps, he was glad they were made of stone. Breaking his neck falling down the stairs after a board broke underneath his foot would be a shitty way to die.

The floor was dirt, but no dust came up from it, the air was too damp, which was good on two levels. One, dust is always undesirable. Two, damp air is perfect for storing wine, which was what he was looking for. He didn't have to search. The whole cellar was filled with rows of wine racks.

Levi held up the lantern, spun bottles, checked labels. He admired the system of organization, by grape rather than by year.

After a few minutes, Erna was coming down the stairs behind him. She jumped the last five steps, causing her candles to go out. "Oops." She went over to stand in Levi's light. He set the gas lamp on the floor and pulled out a bottle, taking out a handkerchief and wiping the dust away from the year on the label. Erna ran her fingers over some bottles, not particularly caring about their contents.

Levi said, "I hope you packed light." He turned her around and opened the pack on her shoulders. He put the bottle inside and then did a double take. He picked up the lantern and looked, "There's almost nothing in here."

Erna shrugged. She looked down at her 3DMG and said, "I don't need anything but this."

Levi face-palmed, "I'm not going to get into why you're wrong right now." He gave her a shove forward. "Pull any reds. Nothing dated after 800."

Erna lit her candles from the lamp on the floor and went wandering. After a minute, she called over, "What's a cabernet?" She pronounced it wrong, like 'cabinet'. She didn't even care about the answer, she just liked asking him questions that he thought were dumb or naïve to get a reaction out of him.

He corrected her, "Cabernet." He pulled a bottle and put it in his own pack. "What year?"

She squinted at the label, "702…"

Levi almost scoffed. It was unreal. "If that's what they left, I want to see what they took with them."

"So keep it?" She asked, but he didn't bother to answer her. Too obvious. She put it in her pack. "What's a Riesling?" She pronounced it like 'ree-ess-ling.'

"Sweet, shitty, you would hate it." He was only half paying attention to her, so he didn't hear her lock a blade into one of her handgrips. He did, however, hear the sound of glass breaking when she cut the top of the bottle off. He walked around the end of the wine rack he was browsing to see her, head tipped back, taking a swig from the broken bottle. She brought the bottle down, setting it neatly on the floor even though it was already broken. "You were right. I hate that." She made a disgusted face.

He should have reprimanded her, but he knew this game. "I see what you're doing. It's not going to work."

She looked at him innocently with her big, storm cloud eyes. "What am I doing?" She bit her lower lip just a little, betraying that innocent look.

"You're trying to get a rise out of me, you little slut." He turned his attention back to the wine racks. "I'm not playing with you here. Everything is filthy."

Erna pouted. The fact that he was calling her on her game didn't discourage her from wanting to play it. But since he was onto her, there was no need to be subtle. She sheathed the blade back in her scabbard and perused the rack in front of her. She picked out a bottle. "How do you feel about merlot from 724?" This she pronounced correctly.

Levi didn't bother to look at her as he twisted bottles around to look at labels. "Keep it."

Erna tossed the bottle over her shoulder. It exploded on the floor. "Oops."

He gave her a look, but refused to lose his temper or even change his tone. "Do you want to keep going?" he dared her.

Erna held up a cabernet sauvignon and dropped it. Some of the wine splashed his boots when the bottle shattered. He looked down at his boots to assess the damage, but made no reaction. Her face was just as blank as she took another bottle and threw it past his head to shatter against the far wall behind him.

Levi still hid any emotion from his voice as he told her, "You're going to pay for every single one of these when we get home."

Erna played dumb, "I'm sure I don't know what you're talking about."

She took another bottle. Since smashing them wasn't getting any results, she held it close to her mouth and was about to blow the dust off of it to cloud the space between them until he warned her, "I wouldn't do that."

"Oh, would that upset you?" she asked innocently. "Do you want to do something about it?"

"I'll do everything when we get back," he promised before he went back to ignoring her. He wouldn't have let her get what she wanted even if the place wasn't filthy; she needed to learn a lesson about being a spoiled, manipulative little bitch. She got what she wanted too often.

"That's no fun, you won't even be angry anymore by then," she whined at him. She found it both sexy and infuriating that he was smart enough to see what she was trying to do and not letting her manipulate him and coax out the reaction she wanted. "I like it better when you lose your temper and you're all scary," she pouted. She wanted to be punished, as usual, but also she was craving an adrenaline rush. She might not have been if the mission had not been so relatively easy. She gave up trying, since he clearly wasn't going to react no matter what she did, and looked at the bottle in her hand, reading the label through the dust.

"Your candor is appreciated," he said as he put another bottle into his pack. "Your behavior is unacceptable."

Erna put her pack on the ground and crouched down to gently place bottles he had set out into it. She stuck her tongue out at him and said, "Well I'm not sorry."

"You will be." Levi always had evil ideas about what to do with her, but he had a lot of time before they would be back at headquarters. He could think of worse things. When her pack was full, he told her, "Go upstairs. Find a bed that isn't covered in rat piss."

Erna went obediently, without another word, having given up on trying to get a reaction out of him. Levi spent a while longer looking for good vintages. With limited space in his pack, he had to discard some bottles when he found better ones. He spent about fifteen minutes in the cellar before making his way upstairs. He didn't need to look around for her. It was dark and there was only candlelight coming from one room.

He found her on her knees, her 3DMG and pack removed and on the floor next to her, frantically tearing through the lower shelves of a walk-in closet, tossing sheets and blankets behind her into a pile. He felt like every time he entered a room to find her, she was doing something strange. At least she wasn't ripping the bedding with her teeth this time as far as he could tell. He sighed. "What are you doing?"

Erna tossed another sheet into the pile behind her. "Everything's moth-eaten. I'm trying to find sheets you can actually sleep on," then she muttered under her breath, "obsessive compulsive mysophobic freak."

Levi looked around. The room was beautiful once. Every piece of furniture was antique. Every piece of art was an expensive status symbol. It must have been the master bedroom. Now it was just dusty and dank and worthless aside from being a shelter with a semi-suitable mattress and box-spring. The bed was carefully made up, piled with pillows and a beautiful comforter, silk sheets, all dirty and useless to him. He wanted to rip it all from the bed, but that would result in a dust cloud. As he began carefully removing the bedding, he asked her, "Where did you learn that word?" even though he already knew the answer. He'd only ever heard one other person call him 'mysophobic.'

Erna shook out a set of fleece sheets, also moth-eaten. "Hange. She says you're mysophobic."

Levi dropped the bedding into her discard pile. "Distaste for dirt isn't the same thing as an irrational fear."

"Yeah, yeah…" she said dismissively, still tearing through the closet and tossing things. "Ack!" she shouted as she was pulled up and back to her feet too quickly. Levi lifted her by her forearm and tossed her backwards onto the bed. She landed sitting up, leaned back, and looked up at him hopefully.

"You're not going to find anything. Sleep on the bare mattress." Levi roughly grabbed her leg and pulled off one boot and then the other, letting them fall to the floor and kicking them out of the way of the bed. He tossed her leg aside and sat on the edge of the bed, kicking his own boots off.

Erna tucked her knees under her and reached for Levi, encircling her arms around his waist from behind, nuzzling at him like a cat, and licking his neck. He turned and put a hand in her hair. For a second she thought he would ruffle her hair or kiss her or something, but she quickly found herself pushed down flat against the mattress, Levi's hand gripping her curls tightly. He looked down at her face with that bored, half-lidded look to his eyes. "Go to sleep."

Erna made a whining noise as Levi let go of her hair and lay down next to her, putting a possessive arm around her. He closed his eyes and added, "You're not allowed to talk to Hange anymore."


	20. Menage a Trois

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Obvious chapter title is obvious.

Erna ran along the wood shingled rooftop of a townhouse style building, a blur against the grey pre-dawn sky. Without hesitating or slowing her pace, she reached the edge of the roof, pushed off from the ball of one foot, and jumped. She shot a hook into another roof and landed on it running. Her eyes were narrowed in determination and annoyance. She was chasing after a titan – normally an easy enough thing for her. But this was turning out to actually be very difficult, since this titan was chasing after Hange who was much faster and more unpredictable than Erna ever thought to give her credit for.

As Erna tried to catch up and stay on them, Hange shot over to a building, faking right only to retract her hooks midair and redirect them over to the left, quickly swinging around to the side of the titan as it fumbled to keep up with her. The thing planted a foot, cratering the cobblestoned street, and tried to turn quickly to grab her, but it lost its balance and ran into a building, demolishing it by about half in an explosion of debris. Luckily no one was inside it. Erna was just catching up as it pushed itself up to stand again and make another grab for Hange who was standing on another roof now. She jumped back just out of the titan's reach as it grabbed for her, and then jumped back again as it swung with the other hand. She was laughing gleefully.

Erna regretted letting Hange talk her out of killing the thing when she had first spotted it. It had been around five am and Hange had been keeping Erna company on her watch shift since she was "too excited to sleep anyway." Mostly Hange had just been talking at Erna in her manic kind of way, rambling about whatever came to mind, not caring that Erna hadn't responded with a single word. She had taken Levi literally when he told her she wasn't allowed to talk to Hange anymore. That was not why she didn't protest when Hange grabbed her arm as they both spotted the titan and told her not to kill it because she wanted to "study it." She had hesitated because it was an order from a superior officer. Even though Hange was crazy, she was still a squad leader and Erna had difficulty defying orders from a figure of authority.

That difficulty waned with every second that Erna had to continue her mad dash after Hange and her titan subject. Erna's focus stayed fixed on the nape of the titan's neck as she followed behind it. The titan's focus stayed on Hange whose movements were unpredictable, thus making the titan unpredictable for Erna to follow and anticipate. She tried to get closer.

The titan apparently gave up on trying to use its hands and leapt to chomp at Hange with its teeth, only missing her by a hair. Erna shot her hooks into the roof near Hange and reeled herself in to cut the titan's neck, but it moved at the last second, following Hange as she flew towards a chimney sticking out of the roof of a house close by. Instead of landing on the Titan's shoulder, Erna's feet hit the shingles. She crouched and huffed in frustration, turning around she took off again.

Hange zig-zagged between buildings. The titan followed her mouth-first. Erna had enough. Following a titan for so long and not being able to kill it was frustrating to her very core. Instead of trying to go for the neck again, she shot her hooks into the ground ahead of the titan, hoping it and Hange would stay on course for two full seconds. She reeled herself in quickly and slashed the Achilles tendon as she flew past, hitting the ground running and flitting back up towards the rooftops as the titan stumbled on the now useless leg and fell. As soon as it was prone, Erna let herself fall and spun her blades into the nape of its neck with such force that she almost fully decapitated the thing.

Hange cried "Nooo!" as she maneuvered down to the ground and ran over to the steaming monster. Erna sheathed her blades and walked away, completely past the point of listening to or caring about Hange anymore.

Everyone was awake and outside now. There was a flurry of activity as some maneuvered along the rooftops to lookout for any more titans, some were getting the horses ready to go, and some were just trying to collect their wits and fully wake up and take in the situation. The sun was only just starting to rise.

Erna went back to the rooftop she had left her pack on and raised it carefully to her shoulders before shooting her hooks to a point midway down the exterior wall of another house and arcing down gently to the ground, bending her knees to absorb the shock and prevent any of the wine bottles in the pack from breaking. She walked back towards the town center and found Levi and Mike standing at the dry fountain.

When she got close, Levi shot her a look, "Was that necessary?" He asked, referring to the minor debacle.

It wasn't. There wasn't an excuse for it, but Erna tried to defend herself or at least shift the blame. "Hange told me not to kill it!"

Levi didn't lose his temper, he just raised an eyebrow and said calmly, "I don't give a shit what Hange says and neither should you. You take orders from this hulking idiot," he pointed at Mike with his thumb, "Not Hange." Mike said nothing, but sneered at Levi who ignored him and went on, "And when you're on watch you're meant to kill titans before they become a problem, not let them play tag with crazy Shit-Glasses over there."

Erna turned to look over her shoulder. She could make out Hange scurrying around the dead titan, trying to touch it despite the burning heat. Poor Moblit was trying to restrain her before she severely burnt herself. It was comical, but Erna couldn't laugh. She had made an error in judgment and she knew it. She should have gone with her gut instinct from the beginning. She didn't want to admit it or apologize. That was too much a blow to her pride. She tried to deflect the blame again, "But Hange…"

Mike didn't let her continue, "You're supposed to be working on thinking for yourself."

Erna sighed in defeat and felt very sorry for herself. "I'm no good at this whole thinking thing. I'm good at taking orders. Can't I just do that?" She crossed her arms, leaned on one hip, and looked away from them as she blew a curl away from her eyes.

"No. Get good at it. No one's going to babysit you," Levi answered. He was irritated because it wasn't that she wasn't good at thinking, it was just that she didn't want to take any responsibility for her actions. On top of that he hated the very rare occasions when she showed even slight signs of self-pity. It didn't suit her.

Hange flew over, dropping down a ways behind Erna and walking up, sighing, "So disappointing. I had a feeling that one was special. You didn't need to kill it like that."

"We're not here for research," Levi reminded her. He glanced around at the relative chaos Hange and Erna's misadventure had caused. His eyes came to rest on Erna again. She was blowing on her palms and shaking out her fingers. He strode over to her and grabbed her hands, turning her palms up. They were raw and red where her fingers met her palms. "Why didn't you wrap these?"

Erna shrugged. "I thought fresh air was good for blisters," she lied.

"You didn't pack gauze or bandages?" He asked even though he knew the answer. Before they filled it with bottles of wine there was nothing in her pack but a waterskin and carrots. She looked down and away. He let go of her hands. "Tch. You're going to get an infection. This is why you pack more than your maneuver gear," he scolded her as he shrugged off his pack and took out some gauze, roughly grabbing her wrist and pulling her closer so he could wrap her hands.

Hange brought her hands to her face, and did a little happy dance, "Aww, Levi, sooo cayute! Who knew you could be so caring?" she teased him.

"Tch." Levi turned to see Hange and Mike both smiling at him smugly. "Te faire foutre avec quelque chose de rude et épineux… lunettes de merde." He turned back to Erna's hands, she held out one hand palm up and he quickly and carefully wrapped it in gauze. Erna was blushing and looking at the ground, equally as embarrassed by the attention from Hange and Mike as she was by Levi treating her like a child.

"Aww, what does that mean? Is it something sweet?" Hange would not let up. She had to rub it in every time Levi did anything remotely nice. She loved catching him being solicitous with Erna. She thought they were both adorably angry and fun to embarrass and annoy.

Levi ignored Hange. Erna creased her brow in thought and translated, "It means something like, 'fuck yourself with something rough, shit-glasses.'"

Levi corrected her, "Rough and thorny,  _épineux_  is thorny. You're getting better though." He was actually a little impressed with how quickly she was picking up French just from listening to him. He never sat her down and actually taught her anything. He didn't have the time or patience for it.

Hange frowned. Erna smiled. Levi continued to perform basic first aid on her, scolding her again and muttering, "Learn to take care of yourself. You're like a fucking animal." He finished with her hand and let it fall to her side. "And don't smile. You're still in a lot of trouble."

Erna's lips fell into a solemn, straight line and she saluted with her bandaged hands.

Levi looked around. The general panic that had been going on all around them was finally beginning to settle down. "Go get your horse. We may as well head out since you and Hange got everyone shitting themselves."

Erna nodded and walked away. Hange sighed with an air of despair, "It was just one little titan, couldn't have been more than eight meters. I wanted to watch it for a while. I can't believe she killed it before I got to make any meaningful observations."

"I was about to kill it if she didn't catch you," Levi said nonchalantly.

Hange pouted. "You're both mean."

"And you're insane," Levi said, as long as they were stating obvious facts.

"Insane for science!" Hange responded enthusiastically.

"If you'd let it get over here, it could have killed people." Mike's voice was quiet, serious, he rarely wasted words on things that weren't serious.

"Of course I wouldn't let that happen. I was intentionally keeping my pattern erratic to get a feeling for its reaction time and muscle coordination." Hange gave both of them her best  _Trust me, I'm a scientist_  face.

Levi brought his fingers to the bridge of his nose. "Keep it up with this shit and Erwin will bring the hammer down on your pet project. Don't fuck this up for me. I pushed for your shitty idea because I want to get out of that overcrowded shit-heap of a castle. I need a vacation from Commander Eyebrows hanging on my dick."

"It's not just a pet project! My research could unlock the secret to saving humanity." Hange smiled as her thoughts drifted to thinking up names for new titan pets… er, research subjects. She shook her head, "This is for science! It's important, don't trivialize my work! It could be the key to a titan-less world!"

Mike looked down at Levi, "When we get to the vacation resort, I want a room far away from yours…" Hange fumed at the continued implication that the mission to further her research was akin to some kind of holiday break for them.

Levi narrowed his eyes at Mike and then shrugged, "I gave you earplugs and I gag the succubus every night. What more do you want me to do?"

"It's not the noises, though those are also disturbing. It's the smells. That girl is drenched in pheromones… and you smell like heavy duty cleaning solution… It's not a good combination…"

Hange snickered to herself, "Commander Eyebrows…"

Levi just shrugged again. "Put the earplugs in your nose. Breathe through your mouth. Problem solved."

Mike gave Hange a hopeful look, "Can I room with you until we leave for vacation?" He maintained a straight face but he was, in fact, teasing her.

Hange creased her eyebrows, glaring at both of them before storming off.

* * *

 

Erna walked over to where her squad's horses were tied. People were rushing everywhere, getting ready on the off chance that Levi would decide they would move out early since everyone was awake now. Erna saw Armin, ready and standing with his horse, looking somewhat tense.

Most everyone else wasn't ready yet. It took a few expeditions or missions outside the walls to get used to the  _hurry up and wait_  of breaking things down, getting your wits about you, and getting organized and ready to go in less than a few minutes. It made it easy to spot rookies. Erna saw one short brunette girl, whose name she still had not bothered to learn, finish tacking up her horse and let out a breath, looking to Armin and cheerfully announcing, "Ready!"

Armin's eyes squinted as he smiled at her enthusiasm and he gently reminded her, "Where's your pack?"

The girl's face fell and she groaned. She didn't answer, but she ran off, obviously having forgotten it back inside whichever house she had slept in.

Erna came up beside Armin and frowned. "I thought we were supposed to have the brainy squad."

"Tactical or strategic intelligence doesn't always translate into good memory and common sense when in new situations or under pressure…" Armin said this quietly and thoughtfully. Then he perked up, flashing a kind smile at her, "Besides, it's only their first mission, we all have to start somewhere."

Erna scowled at the whole idea. She was not as patient or compassionate as Armin about the learning curve of new recruits. "I hate your optimism. Where's Jean?" She would prefer Jean's cynicism right now. She saw another rookie squad member go to put Raven's saddle on, trying to be helpful. She calmly said, "Don't" at the boy, but she either hadn't said it quickly enough or he hadn't heard her before Raven kicked at him.

The hapless kid jumped back and stumbled as Erna continued, "Don't drop my fucking saddle or I will use your face to polish away the scuff marks." He then raised his arms as he fell on his ass, making sure Erna's saddle didn't touch the ground. She walked over and gently took it from his hands, satisfied at the wide-eyed expression of terror on his face, she balanced the saddle on her hip and extended a hand to help him up.

"Sorry," the kid took her hand and she pulled him up. Once standing, he started to properly introduce himself, "I'm –"

Erna cut him off with a simple "Nope," as she turned away and went to saddle Raven, the kid still standing with his hand extended in confusion.

Armin gave him a warm  _please forgive her_ look and attempted to gently coax Erna into behaving more sociably. He was well practiced at that, given the tempers of his closest friends. "Erna, there's no reason to be impolite. Making new acquaintances won't hurt you."

Erna didn't look at him as she responded in her brattiest tone, "You don't know that. Maybe I'm allergic to kindness. Maybe you and Krista give me hives," as she cinched the girth.

Armin went over to the nervous kid and put a gentle hand on his back, pushing him over to Erna and forcing the introduction on her, "Erna, this is Konrad Jürgen."

Erna glared at the boy with a coldness that made him literally shiver. He had very short, dark hair. Sort of a baby face, she thought, not too round or undefined, he had a good jaw line and cheekbones, but he just looked so young. They all looked young… and frightened… and she thought they should look frightened. They were relying on pure luck from moment to moment. It was only luck that every second ticked by without a mass of titans coming and devouring them all. These kinds of thoughts were what made her eyes get so dark and cold whenever she looked at new recruits. She could tell he obviously wanted to get away from her, but Armin held him in place with a hand gripping his upper arm. Armin knew her well enough to know that she wouldn't do anything violent, so he pressed her, "You don't have to be friendly, but don't you think you should at least know the names of your squad members?"

Erna stared at the kid and watched small beads of sweat form on his forehead for about a minute. Armin didn't let up, holding the kid there and waiting for her to acknowledge his existence with words. Finally Erna broke her intimidating eye contact with the kid to look at Armin who gave her a smile that said  _You're not scary to me because I know how nice you are deep down_. Erna finally sighed in exasperation and extended her hand to the kid, "Nice to meet you, Konrad. I am Erna and I sincerely hope you don't die slowly and painfully in some horrifying manner."

Konrad shook Erna's hand, but did not feel any better, "…. Thank you?"

Armin smiled at Erna as she took her hand back, "See? That wasn't bad." He let go of Konrad's arm and the boy backed away a few steps before turning and walking quickly away to check on other preparations that would involve him being out of Erna's line of sight for a while.

Erna growled at Armin, "You know I don't like naming them before they've survived at least a year." She set her pack down on the ground. Wine bottles were heavy. Armin just gave her that knowing smile, which further infuriated her. "I'm not like Jean. You're not going to get at my sweet center. I don't have one." She looked around. "Where is he anyway?"

"He went to watch for titans." Armin looked towards the rooftops, but Jean was nowhere in sight.

Erna grabbed Raven's bridle and put the reins over her head. "Where did you last see Eren and Mikasa?"

Armin quietly said, "They wouldn't do anything…" but he didn't sound sure. His whole face betrayed his concern.

"Did you talk to them last night?" Erna held the bit out for Raven, but the horse turned away, not in the mood to accept it.

"I didn't. I thought they could use some time to cool off."

Erna struggled with Raven's bridle, "Well... I guess..." She got the bit past Raven's lips, but the horse wouldn't open her teeth. "You would know… better than…" Erna put her thumb in the corner of Raven's mouth, got her to open it, and quickly pulled the bit up and in, "anyone." She patted Raven's head and the horse gave her a swift shove with her nose, sending Erna flying back a few feet. Erna brushed off her shirt and casually picked up her pack before looking at Armin. He looked like he was struggling with not worrying about it. She sighed. Those big blue eyes. They were a curse. "Do you want me to go look for him?"

Armin smiled, "I'll take the ground if you take the rooftops."

Erna tied Raven to a post with the other horses, put her pack down again, and was gone, up in the air in a flash.

She spent some time flying around the rooftops at high speeds, going out in concentric circles from where she started. She wished she had told Armin to use a flare or something if he found Jean first. She hadn't come up with anything yet. Other soldiers did not know what she was talking about when she asked them whether they had seen a guy with a horse face recently.

* * *

 

"Hey." Armin had at least found Eren in the most logical place. He was ready and waiting to go with Levi and everyone at the front of the formation that was slowly coming together. Ever since Erna had been transferred, Eren was once again Levi's scapegoat and general whipping post, so he did what he could to not give the short-tempered captain any excuses to knock his teeth out.

"Oh, hey," Eren tried to give Armin his most casual smile. He felt very awkward still. Even though he considered Armin his closest friend, he had never pictured him as someone who would even want a romantic relationship. He'd never dated, they'd never talked about sex, and Eren just didn't think about Armin as being… so normal. Armin had always been idealized in Eren's head as being so above all of that, too smart for romance or sex. He felt a little guilty about not knowing his best friend as well as he thought. Then there was the added awkwardness of the object of Armin's affection turning out to be the one person Eren couldn't stand. That just baffled him. He didn't even want to think about it.

"Have you seen Jean?"

_Damnit._  Eren shook his head. "Not since last night."

"… Are you okay?"

Eren brought his hand to the back of his head, closed his eyes, and smiled. "Yeah! I'm great."

He was not being very convincing, but Armin didn't want to push it. For one thing, it didn't seem like the right time. For another, he could understand if Eren was a little shocked still. Getting caught in the middle of a passionate make out session with Jean was not how he would have chosen for Eren and Mikasa to find out, but there wasn't anything he could do about it now. He would give Eren some more time to process it before trying to force a discussion.

Levi turned around to inquire, "Oi Armin, where are the brats?"

Armin blinked at him. It was difficult to tell who the captain was specifically speaking of when he used the same noun to refer to just about everyone. He would not, of course, point that out to Levi. So he just responded with, "Um…"

Levi let out an impatient sigh. "Mikasa, Jean, Erna. We're waiting on them," he looked at Armin as if it was his fault that they weren't there and ready to go and he expected him to do something about it.

Armin started to stammer, "I – I don't…"

* * *

 

With no one left milling around the town on the ground or on the rooftops, Jean and Mikasa were much easier for Erna to spot. She maneuvered quickly over a few roofs to the human shaped specks she had spotted from far off. As she got closer she could hear the shouting.

Erna shot a hook into the roof they were on, propelled herself up, let go and let gravity pull her to land right in between them. She didn't care to try and mediate. She simply said, "We're leaving."

Jean and Mikasa didn't move. They glared at each other over Erna's head. Erna hated being short sometimes. She turned to Mikasa, who she assumed was the aggressor here. She figured there was no way Jean could be dumb enough to start something with her here. "Could we not with this right now? You can do whatever to him when we get back."

Jean answered before Mikasa could. "No, let's get this over with." And Erna wondered if he was really dumber than she already thought.

Erna saw Mikasa grit her teeth. She hissed out, "I won't let you take advantage of Armin. Leave him alone or I'll make you."

"I'm not taking advantage of anyone! Do whatever you want, I'm not going to leave him alone. I love him." Jean yelled.

If the situation were less tense, Erna would have teased Jean for admitting to being in love. She made a mental note to do that later after she got them to their squads and everyone was home. She tried to affect a calming tone.

"Mikasa, I know you think Jean's an asshole, rightly so, but I assure you that he and Armin are deep in gross, stupid, romantic love and there's no reason to worry about Armin getting hurt, because honestly, if we should worry about anyone, it's probably Jean. Armin will probably break up with him when he comes to his senses." Jean narrowed his eyes at the back of Erna's head. He reached out and pinched her shoulder hard, making her jump and yelp.

Mikasa balled her hands into fists. "I'm only protecting him. He's my family."

Jean tried to push Erna out of the way, but she struggled to maintain her footing as he yelled over her at Mikasa, "You have a shitty way of protecting your family. If you care so much, then stop treating him like a fucking kid!"

Erna saw Mikasa's shoulder twitch. She ducked to the side. Mikasa grabbed Jean by his collar and spun him around, throwing him about fifteen feet. He slid to a stop just at the edge of the roof.

Erna sighed, "Okay, at least we're moving in the direction of the formation. That's progress."

Jean shook himself off and stood up. He gave Mikasa a snide smirk as he used his 3DMG to maneuver away. Mikasa growled and went chasing after him. Erna quickly made a grab for her cloak to try and stop her, but it slipped through her hands. Erna watched them for a second and sighed before taking off. She was tired of chasing things.

* * *

 

"Tch." Levi's patience was wearing thin. "Do you need an article of clothing or something to pick up the scent?"

"No." Mike knew Levi was only trying to annoy him, comparing him to a bloodhound again. He ignored it. Sniffed the air. They were anxious to leave. Hange and Erna's titan debacle could actually turn out to be a positive thing if it resulted in everyone being ready and leaving earlier… If they didn't have to waste time searching for Jean, Erna, and Mikasa. He and Levi were both getting annoyed, especially after Hange gloated about her squad being all ready to go.

Now they were trying to decide if it was worth it to break up the formation in order to find them. Everyone was ready and in position to leave. Mike sniffed again and turned around, looking to the east side of the fountain marking the center of the town. "They're in that direction."

"Can you tell how far?" Levi asked.

Mike shook his head. He had only smelled them for a moment. They probably weren't staying still.

"So … go fetch."

Mike gave Levi a look. He wouldn't even dignify that with a response. He wasn't going to jump to take orders from Levi and the sarcastic, short man knew it. He was just being a smartass.

They both stayed on their horses, watching in the direction Mike thought he smelled them from. After a few seconds, Levi was about to bark at Eren to go find his sister and friends, but just as he opened his mouth, they saw Jean fly out from between two buildings and hit the ground running. Mikasa appeared a second after him with Erna on her heels.

"Found them." Mike said.

Erna made a dive and caught Mikasa's ankle, making her fall and yelling, "Mikasa! We all want to beat the shit out of Jean, but there's no time!"

Jean stopped running. As he turned around to check that Erna had Mikasa momentarily restrained, he noticed that everyone was ready and waiting for them. He shrugged, brushed himself off and walked past the two to get in formation. Mikasa tried to push Erna away with her foot as she yelled, "Let go! I'm going to kill him!"

Erna quickly crawled up to straddle Mikasa and pin her until she calmed down, but before she could, Mikasa flipped over and grabbed Erna's wrists. They grappled for a minute. Jean went and joined the formation, putting on a smug look as if he was above it all and completely innocent of being involved in any of this.

Mike looked at Levi. "Do you want to break that up so we can leave?"

Levi scowled at Mike. He  _did_  want to leave. He did _not_  want to try to get in the middle of Mikasa and Erna. One of them he could probably restrain without too much difficulty, but both of them together could probably tear even Mike limb from limb in a few seconds. And they both had that rabid look. Best not to fuck with it. He didn't answer. He turned and said, "Oi, Eren," in his bored deadpan. "Go break that up."

Eren stood like a deer in headlights. He didn't move. He was trying to figure out what would be worse, taking a chance at getting his ass kicked by Mikasa or Erna if he tried to get between them or the certainty that Levi would kick his ass if he didn't. He watched the girls. Mikasa tried to push Erna away as she bucked her hips to throw her, but the delicate-looking, doll-like girl had a lot more strength than one would guess and she was used to being bucked around by an 1100 lb horse, so Mikasa was nothing to her. He took a halting step forward. He already knew what it felt like to get his ass kicked by Levi. Maybe Mikasa and Erna wouldn't be so bad.

Connie grabbed the sleeve of Eren's jacket. "No, wait." Everyone looked at Connie who was fixated on watching Mikasa and Erna. "I've had dreams that start this way. Let's see how this plays out."

There was a beat of silence before Levi said, "Oi, keep my slave out of your masturbatory fantasies."

"And my sister," Eren pulled his arm abruptly from Connie's grasp.

Sasha simply brought a fist down square on the top of Connie's skull. He winced and rubbed his head where she'd hit him, saying defensively, "What? You were there too!"

Mikasa managed to throw Erna off and jumped to her feet to go rearrange Jean's smug face. Erna quickly lunged to make a grab for Mikasa's ankle again, but she just missed. She didn't make any further effort as Mikasa stalked away. She didn't really have much invested in whether or not Jean got destroyed. She didn't have a strong sense of social justice. She'd only wanted to stop them so that she could get them to the formation and they could leave. Now that they were at least in the right place, she felt cleared of any responsibility. She gingerly got herself up and dusted herself off. Then she looked past Mikasa's back to throw Jean an evil smirk, wordlessly letting him know that he was on his own now and she was going to enjoy the show. His smug face turned to one of apprehension as he realized how much shit he was in.

Levi knew he could pull rank and order Mikasa to stop in her tracks before she reached Jean and thoroughly assaulted him. He probably would before things got to be what he considered 'out of hand.' But for now he didn't mind letting this go on a little longer as it was at least mildly entertaining.

Mikasa was locked onto Jean, losing sight of everyone else and thinking of nothing but how much she wanted to hurt him for taking advantage of one of her dearest friends and being in a position to cause Armin any emotional pain. She wanted to rip his slimy, smug face off and grind it into the dirt.

Suddenly before she could even close most of the 30 foot gap between her and Jean, Armin was in front of her, blocking Jean's slimy, smug face from her vision. She was about to move around him, but Armin's quiet, stern, and slightly sad voice held her as he said, "Mikasa… Stop…"

She did stop, and she looked mildly shocked, like she had just been woken from a dream to see Armin's very determined face in front of her. "But…" she began.

Armin wasn't angry. For the most part, he truly felt bad for Mikasa. She let herself get so wrapped up in her love for her friends and with such devotion that she had very little room to think about her needs or take care of herself. She really did act like a mother to him and Eren and gave them all of the love and self-sacrifice that a mother would. She had been doing that since they were young and they probably wouldn't be there without her. For that Armin felt eternally grateful, but he didn't need the protection anymore.

He reached out and held Mikasa's shoulders as he said quietly, "You can't do this anymore. You need to let me be an adult and make mistakes and maybe get hurt. I only need you to love me and be there for me if I need a shoulder to cry on and I'll do the same for you, okay?"

"Armin…" Mikasa's voice got soft as her eyes welled up with tears. The realization that she was more upset about her changing relationship with her friends than about Jean came to the surface of her consciousness. Being a protector and their rock was the only way she knew how to express her love for Eren and Armin, but as they were getting older, Armin was getting stronger and Eren was getting less impulsive and it was hard for her to figure out her role with them anymore. It made her feel like she was losing them. She blinked her tears away and they ran down her cheeks. She pulled Armin into the tightest hug. It took every ounce of her considerable emotional strength to not break down sobbing in his arms.

Erna sighed and leaned on her hip as she watched them. She was disappointed on a couple of levels. She thought it would have been fun to watch Mikasa make Jean scream and possibly cry. Also, seeing Mikasa suddenly get emotional was very disconcerting. She really was like a parent to her friends, even Erna could admit that she indulged in using Mikasa as a sort of replacement maternal figure, and it is extremely troubling to see your parent in a vulnerable state. She would have done anything to make Mikasa stop crying, but she felt this didn't involve her. She awkwardly walked past Mikasa and Armin to join her squad, taking the reins of Raven's bridle from a green soldier whose name she still hadn't learned. Then she glared at Jean. "I blame you for this."

That snapped Jean out of his state of mixed apprehension and confusion. He turned to her and gave her a snide look, narrowing his eyes and crinkling his nose. "How?! How is this my fault?"

Erna said in an exasperated sigh, "I don't know…" She thought about it. "If you could have kept your hands to yourself for one whole night, she never would have known."

"It takes two people. You can't put all the blame on me."

"Yes I can. It's easy." She nodded in Armin's direction as he was smoothing a hand over Mikasa's hair while she cried into his shoulder. "How could I blame him for anything ever? Look at him."

Jean turned to watch Armin again and his snide attitude melted, "You're right."

"He's the best and you are like literally the worst," she went on. "You two are like sunlight and darkness. He's all intelligent and kind and you're a dumb jerk." She paused, trying to think of more. "Also, he's beautiful and you have a horse face."

He sneered, baring his teeth as he hissed out at her, "You can stop that now."

She smiled, "I wouldn't want you to be any other way. You'd be no fun at all."

* * *

 

Erna didn't feel tired until the second Raven's hooves hit the drawbridge. It was like her body was holding back all feelings of fatigue until it was finally at headquarters again where it would be safe to rest. There was normally a relief team ready for the squads as they returned from missions, there to take the horses, put things away, provide medical attention and triage if needed. It was all very efficient, a system of Erwin's design. But they had returned a few hours earlier than expected, which was unprecedented as far as Erna knew, and so there was more confusion and scrambling and less efficiency than usual.

Erna's knees almost buckled when she dismounted. She was sore all over. Too much riding, too much chasing, not enough sleep and no coffee. She didn't want to have to wait for someone to take her horse so that she could go inside and pass out, so she started leading Raven towards the stables. Before she took more than a few steps, someone ran over and offered, "I'll take your horse for you, Miss Raban."

She snapped, but in a cold, quiet way. "Don't… call me that." She didn't shout. She had no energy for shouting. She handed over the reins without further argument and the soldier walked away with Raven. Erna set down her pack of wine bottles and stretched her tight back by reaching down to touch her toes.

Armin had overheard her bristle at the honorific, so he went over and reminded her, "They wouldn't call you that if you made an effort to be personable. They use a formal name with you because you're so severe." He was genuinely trying to be helpful.

Erna did not want 'helpful.' She stretched up and bent her leg back, grabbing her ankle behind her and stretching her quads. She said sarcastically, "Thank you for the suggestion, but I'm pretty sure if I just kill the next few people who call me 'Miss,' it will have the same desired effect." She set her foot down and bent her other leg back and said more sincerely and quietly, "Stop trying to make me nice."

"I'm not trying. You  _are_ nice."

Jean was nearby, listening to them as he waved away a member of the medical staff who wanted to check out his black eye. He called over, "No she's not."

"See?" Erna said. "Jean knows."

Armin smiled. He had objective evidence that he could bring up to prove Erna's friendliness if they wanted to make a debate of it.

Erna didn't like that look. Armin's bright-eyed smile said that he was about to get into one of his intelligent and lengthy explanations. Just as he started to open his mouth she stamped her foot, "Don't you start!"

Armin stopped, confused, "Start what?"

"Don't start being all intelligent and objective and over-explaining things!"

Armin didn't get it. "But your behavior consistently shows –"

Erna cut him off there by whining loudly, "Jeeannnnn, make him stop."

Jean came over and smiled as he took Armin's hand and began dragging him away. Jean liked when he got all technical. He thought it was sexy and liked to try to fluster Armin with teasing whenever he was trying to make a point or explain something. "Come on, let's go back to the room and you can spell out your argument and try to convince me."

Erna breathed a sigh of relief. She avoided being outed as a slightly soft and nice person yet again. She needed to be more careful about giving off even hints of compassion. It was hard with Armin though. He definitely brought it out in people. But with him gone, she could properly scowl again. She picked up her heavy pack and trudged toward the castle.

She wondered how much her pack was worth now. She wondered how much that whole cellar would be worth. Not that she cared about money, but she knew someone who did and she wondered if it was worth telling Erwin about it. She didn't know if she should bring it up. She wondered if he would have reservations about the morality of looting abandoned houses in titan territory. So much she didn't understand about the right and wrongness of things. She decided to ignore the issue, try to turn her brain off, and go melt in a hot bath for a while.

"Erna." Levi's voice stopped her. She looked up. She hadn't been aware that she'd been about to walk into him as she was walking with her head down. She perked up a little at the use of her name. She liked the way he said it. It sounded better coming from him. Everything did.

Her face was so easy to read. He could see her forget whatever had been keeping her head down in thought. Her pupils slowly dilated a little and her expression softened. He asked her, only slightly mocking, "You like that, don't you, Erna?"

His evil, mocking tone did nothing to snap her out of the languid state his use of her name put her into. "Hmm?"

"When I use your name."

"Yes," she answered eagerly, hoping he would do it again. He so rarely used anyone's real name, least of all hers. He knew it drove her crazy. She didn't understand why he would even ask, it was so obvious.

He took her face in his hands and looked deeply into her eyes. He said slowly and deliberately, "That's the last time you're going to hear it for some time. You aren't deserving of a name anymore." He took a second to watch the confusion and anxiety play over her face. He leaned down, now almost whispering. "Go back to the apartment, get cleaned up. I want you in the living room, naked, and on your knees by the time I get up there." He let that sink in before informing her, "You're in  _so_  much trouble."

He took his hands away from her as he heard Erwin's footsteps coming up behind him. Erna didn't move, her mouth half-open in shock. Levi gave her a shove in the direction of the castle, snapping her out of it enough to get her moving. "Better hurry," he warned her.

Erwin nodded at Erna as she passed him, but she didn't react. He stopped at Levi. "She looks dazed."

"Rough couple of days," Levi responded with a nonchalant shrug.

"Anything particularly rough?" Erwin looked around. "You're back early."

"Actually, everything was smooth. Supplies were stored easily. No casualties except for one titan, three wine bottles, Mikasa's sanity, and my last ounce of patience for Hange."

Erwin raised his eyebrows. "Sounds like it should be easy for you to have a report done by later tonight then."

Levi narrowed his eyes at Erwin. "Fuck you up the ass with your paperwork."

Erwin just laughed. Then he straightened his face again. "In all seriousness though, I would rather have it before tomorrow." Erwin hated delays. There was never any reason to put off work if it could be done now.

Levi never doubted Erwin's seriousness. He opened his pack and showed him the six wine bottles he had fit into it. "Courtesy of supply point #2. I might look into getting a vacation home there."

Erwin wouldn't have known he was joking from the tone. Levi's jokes were always in the same deadpan with which he delivered anything else. He looked closely and was shocked. Old, good wine vintages were impossible to find. They weren't even on the black market anymore. "Levi, you can't…"

"Don't act like you don't take bribes." Levi knew Erwin too well to buy the whole clean-cut golden boy act. "Just come over tonight for a bottle and we'll forget about the report until tomorrow." He closed the pack again and put it over his shoulder.

Erwin gave it a moment of consideration. "You promise nothing remarkable happened?"

"On my honor," Levi said ironically.

Erwin weighed the pros and cons a few seconds longer before giving up. "Need me to bring anything? Do you have a corkscrew?"

"Tch. Obviously." Levi walked away muttering, " _Quel genre d'homme ne possède pas de tire-bouchon_?" (What kind of man doesn't own a corkscrew?)

* * *

 

When Erna set foot inside the castle, she started running. She had finally started to process and realize the gravity of the situation. As she got closer to the apartment, she replayed everything she'd done the night before in her head. There was no question in her mind that she should be worried. She took the stairs two and three at a time, struggling at first to adjust to the weight of the pack and the effort she had to put into moving herself.

"Why didn't I believe him?" she whined to herself. If she'd thought even a little into the future when she'd been purposely trying to irritate him, she could have predicted that he would absolutely follow through with what he'd said about punishing her for everything later. At the time her thinking had been that his anger would be minimized and the punishment wouldn't be severe if he waited rather than doing it in the moment, or that he would even forget about it, but the way his voice had sounded just now outside made her realize that she'd had it completely backwards. Of course he wouldn't forget to make her pay for her bratty behavior. It's not like he had a lot of other distractions or ways of entertaining himself. He'd probably been thinking about it for at least a large part of the way back.

"Fucked up… I fucked up…" she huffed out as she hit the top of the stairs, out of breath. She sprinted for the apartment door, almost unable to stop herself in time, not taking into account how the extra weight on her back gave her a greater inertia than she was used to. She grabbed the door handle and used it to keep herself from catapulting past the door, swung it open, launched herself inside, closing it behind her and kicking her boots off with the same speed and concentration she usually reserved only for life-threatening situations. She slowed down for a second to gently set her pack down next to her boots. She tried to remember how many bottles she had broken trying to get a reaction out of Levi. Was it three? Or four? It couldn't have been more than four.

She got out of her 3DMG and clothes in record time and started the shower running. She didn't even wait for the water to heat up. She screamed and tensed up when she jumped in and the cold water hit her, but she wouldn't slow down. She had no idea how much time Levi would give her, so she went with the assumption that she had no time, just to be safe. Though that thought didn't make her feel safer.

Her lips formed a small smile as she laughed at herself inwardly. Last night she had been trying to get an adrenaline rush by way of provoking him. She was definitely getting that now - when she didn't want it. She was mentally and physically exhausted even with the little burst of energy the fear and anticipation gave her, she just wanted to curl up in bed and sleep for days. The exhaustion made it impossible to even get a truly satisfying adrenaline rush. Her heart was only pounding dully and the language part of her brain still had the ability to form full sentences.

* * *

 

Levi closed the apartment door behind him. He set his pack down, took the green cloak off and threw it on a chair. He could hang it up later. He wasn't always exactly as obsessive compulsive as the rumors went.

He moved to open his pack and retrieve a wine bottle, but he stopped himself. "Corkscrew…" He walked through the living room to the hallway to go get the corkscrew from his desk in the office. He did nothing to acknowledge the presence of the paper-white-skinned naked girl on her knees in front of the coffee table with her hands resting on her lap and eyes pointed at the stone floor.

Erna felt a drop of water fall from one of her still wet curls onto her shoulder. She fought the urge to wipe it away. She didn't want to get caught moving. She got a very uneasy feeling when Levi behaved calmly. She liked it better when he was visibly angry or even when he fully lost his temper. That would be less frightening.

As he walked back in with the corkscrew, he finally addressed her, "Do you know why you're in trouble?"

She kept her head tilted down, but watched him under the veil of her eyelashes as he went through his pack, apparently looking for a particular bottle. She wanted to be careful with her words, but also didn't want to take too long to answer. "Because I was a brat?" She immediately worried that her answer was not specific enough. "Last night… I was trying to get a rise out of you."

Levi found what he was looking for. He pulled out a bottle of Syrah – high in alcohol and low in acidity. He still didn't look at her. He twisted the corkscrew into the center of the cork. "And why would you do that?" he asked.

"Because I wanted it. I wanted to get you to punish me." She did not like this delay in finding out what he was going to do. She started to think maybe it was nothing. Maybe he was doing all of this to unnerve her and after some questioning he would let her go to bed.

He popped the cork and set it and the corkscrew on a side table next to the couch. "How?"

"Hmm?" She lost track, got distracted by thoughts about the comfy bed she wanted to curl up in.

"How did you want me to punish you?" He brought the bottle to his lips, tilted his head back and took a long drink.

The way he said it made her feel it was a trick question or a trap. Like this whole line of questioning was setting her up. She felt constrained. She was only ever able to answer honestly. "I wanted you to hurt me."

His voice dropped at least an octave. "Do I not hurt you enough?"

Erna didn't know how to answer that. He took another swig from the bottle while she had her internal struggle. He let her squirm with that for a few seconds before asking, "Do you want to decide how and when I punish you?"

Erna lowered her eyelashes and shook her head emphatically. She felt thoroughly ashamed of herself.

"No? I figured you did since you keep trying to provoke me."

He moved across the room to stand in front of her. She didn't look up, so he bent over a little and tilted her chin up to look at him. Her eyes were wide. She looked confused and helpless. So new.

"Do you know why I like to hurt you?"

She shook her head. She didn't know and had honestly never even taken a moment to think about it.

"Because you like it so much." He ran his thumb over her lower lip, pressing it down a little. "From when I first saw you… You were begging to be broken." Her eyelids closed a little and her head lolled. She was getting hazy. He pinched her chin firmly between his thumb and forefinger and moved her head to look square at him. This was important. When her eyes showed alertness, again locked on his, he let go and straightened up to stand tall before her.

"You're a slut for pain."

Erna thought he was right, but she still didn't see the point. If he liked hurting her and she liked – no,  _loved_  – being hurt, then there was no problem. She watched him carefully as he took another drink.

"That's why we're having this discipline problem…" he sighed. He brought one foot up to her shoulder and tipped her towards him, moving her down until her chin was nearly on his other boot. He moved his foot to press down between her shoulder blades.

"Lick it," he said casually.

She paused, confused. She tried to lift her shoulders and neck to look up at him, but he held her down with his boot on her back.

He explained, "You got my boots dirty last night. I don't think I should have to be the one to clean them." He pressed his heel into her back, just enough to put some pressure on her. He restrained himself from causing her any pain, though he would have loved to.

Erna remembered the wine from one broken bottle getting on his boots. She wished she could take that back. She still hesitated, so Levi reminded her, "If you wanted to keep your dignity, you shouldn't have acted like a brat." He prompted her again, demanding, "Lick it clean…"

Erna was less than thrilled with the idea. She wondered if she really didn't want to be able to decide how and when he punished her. But he pressed her down until her nose was against the leather of his boot and it gave her a feeling like a light electrical current up and down her spine. She knew that if he really were to offer her that level of power and control, she wouldn't want it. She would rather take the debasement when he deemed fit to humiliate her than change the power dynamic.

Levi didn't push her any further. He was glad when she didn't obey right away. He wanted this to be hard for her. He knew that ultimately she would submit, but it was more fun if he pushed her limits and there was some power struggle. While she grappled with her pride, he took another swig off the bottle of Syrah.

He kept talking just so she wouldn't get too much in her head. "Don't get me wrong, I do enjoy hurting you, but more than that I enjoy breaking your will and making you submit to me." He applied a little more pressure between her shoulders. "Trying to be a manipulative little bitch the way you were last night isn't very submissive is it?"

"Hnngh," Erna groaned. She felt truly, hopelessly trapped. He clearly wasn't going to let her get out of this. She thought briefly about begging. That might placate him. Maybe if she could sound especially pathetic… As quickly as she thought of it, she pushed the idea away. That kind of manipulative thought process was what got her here with her nose pressed against Levi's boot. It smelled like dirt and leather. Dirt didn't bother her, so she didn't think it was so bad, especially since he could probably think of much worse things to have her do, but she was still having a lot of difficulty with it. It was because he put her in a position where she couldn't be passive. It was different from when he humiliated her. With this, he was asking her to humiliate herself and that was so much harder. It made her feel naked – even though she literally was, it felt different. For the first time in a long time, she felt embarrassed and vulnerable. She felt a sinking feeling in her gut that she normally only felt when falling quickly from a great height. She felt like she couldn't do it. Her mind rebelled against the thought of following through with it and made her dizzy. She could hear the wine slosh in the bottle as Levi tipped it to take another sip and she thought that he was probably loving this.

Levi rolled his boot back on its heel, curling the toe up to press against her lips. He said darkly, "I don't want to have to tell you again."

That was the little push over the edge that Erna needed. She finally let go of the stranglehold that she had on her vanity and opened her mouth to press against the leather and follow it as he flattened his sole on the floor again. Once she got over that hurdle it was easy. She kept licking without hesitation and the sinking feeling slowly ebbed away.

Levi hummed, "Mmm… Fuck… You little bitch…" The sight of her on the floor, licking him like a dog made him hotter than he thought it would. It was the fact that she hated it. His baser instinct told him to throw her over the couch and fuck her like an animal, but she would like that too much and that wasn't the point of this little exercise. He breathed deeply, tried to ignore his stiff cock enough to keep things under control. He took his boot off of her back, she had to clean both of them after all.

His voice sounded deep and husky to Erna as he explained the point of all this to her. "You wouldn't have been a wildly disobedient little whore last night if you had thought your punishment would be something you loathe so much."

He paused and let that fact sink in, but also he paused to concentrate on watching her lick from the toe of his boot to the instep. He hummed and closed his eyes. It was hard to control himself. He wanted to make her writhe in pain. He could picture her flinching from his hands, then leaning into him and begging for more, a mess of mixed signals.

Erna could tell from his voice that he was thoroughly enjoying her debasement and she hoped that would mean an early reprieve. Maybe he would let her lick his cock instead of his boots. The boots weren't terrible. They didn't taste like anything until she hit a spot splashed by wine where there was a strong fermented taste, musty and bitter. The only very unpleasant part was the faint traces of dry dirt that left a sandy, dry dusty texture in her mouth. She wondered if she could get away with avoiding touching her tongue to the grit. Would he care? Did he really want his boots clean or did he just want her dignity?

"I've definitely been going about you all wrong," he said evilly. "Trying to punish you with pain or treating you like a fucktoy obviously isn't going to work. You love it too much and you act like a bitch to get more. It was almost cute at first, but your episode last night made me decide we'll need a new system if I don't want you to turn into a wild little bitch who throws things at me when she wants to get beaten and fucked." He took another sip and added, "That was really unacceptable by the way. Those bottles you smashed were priceless. Probably irreplaceable. I should have fucked you with one of the broken shards." He could see her shudder at that. So she was listening. He palmed his cock through his white pants with his free hand.

"So from now on, pain is going to be a reward… if you can manage to be good for more than five minutes."

Erna paused and tilted her head to look up at him and nod that she understood, her eyes looking big and helpless. He couldn't stand it. He narrowed his eyes at her and wordlessly nudged her chin with the toe of his other boot. She promptly put her head back down again and got back to work.

"Humiliation is going to be your punishment now, since you have such a hard time with it," he sneered as she began licking his other boot. "You put so much effort into being taken seriously at work. So much of your concentration set on being intimidating enough so that people won't perceive what a submissive, worthless little pain slut you really are." He saw her stiffen. He had struck a nerve. He wondered if he should twist it further or if that would be too much for her. He couldn't hold it back. He liked pushing her too much.

"How seriously do you think anyone in the Survey Corps would be able to take you if they knew that I could make you lick my boots like a dog whenever I wanted? If they knew how easy it is to get you to beg me to fuck your tight little cunt like your life depends on it?" She didn't stop or slow down in running her tongue over his boots, but he watched her closely and could see her muscles go stiff.

Erna felt dizzy. The sinking feeling came back, worse this time. She felt a mess of emotions. Humiliated and powerless, but somehow aroused by her loss of dignity and self-agency and turned on by the shame of it. It was the most intense emotional rush she had ever experienced.

"The next time you want to try to manipulate me, remember that I can always bend you over my lap and spank you somewhere more public." Levi tilted his head back and closed his eyes, imagining just that for a moment. He unbuttoned his pants and took out his throbbing cock, tugging it in long, languid strokes and looking down again to watch her. She wasn't struggling so much with the humiliation now that he'd given her an idea of how much worse it could be. She nuzzled the inside of his ankle as she kept licking.

"Hurry up, you dirty little slut." He filled his voice with bemused contempt and she reacted beautifully, eagerly licking every inch of his boots until there were no stains or marks visible. When she was done, she looked up and stared hungrily at his cock.

"Sit up," he ordered her.

Erna straightened up, relieved to stretch her back. She watched Levi stroke his cock and hoped the punishment part was over. She wanted to get the bitter taste and grit out of her mouth. Her tongue was all dry, but the more she stared, the less that was a problem as she could never look at his cock without salivating. She couldn't help leaning forward, intending to suck on it, but he stopped her with his voice full of a perfect mix of lust and feigned disgust.

"Don't you dare touch me with that filthy mouth, ma petite salope."

It was her wide-eyed look of utter disappointment and dejection at not being allowed to suck his cock that pushed him over the edge. He felt heat and pressure build up as he told her to open her mouth and he aimed right for her tongue. Careful not to let even the head touch her lips, he shot his cum into her mouth. When he was done and had caught his breath, he brought his fingers to her chin again. She closed her mouth and swallowed. He had to smile a little at the disgusted face she made.

He held the wine bottle out. "You want some of this?"

She nodded eagerly. As he tipped the bottle towards her, she opened her mouth again, but he pulled it away before even a drop hit her tongue and he poured a couple of ounces out onto the floor in front of her instead.

She made a whining sound and gave him a confused look.

He shrugged. "With how you were behaving last night, I thought you preferred wine on the floor."

She looked mournfully down at the deep burgundy puddle in front of her.

Levi took another long draught from the bottle just to rub it in. "In any case, for your shitty behavior last night and the past couple of weeks, you're being demoted from 'fucktoy' to 'cleaning implement.'" He nodded at the wine on the floor. "If you can clean that up well enough, maybe you can get promoted to 'lovely piece of furniture' before the night's over. You could probably be a passable coffee table or ottoman if you could hold still."

Erna let out a deep breath through her nose rather than sigh audibly. She didn't want to risk getting punished further for any snarky attitude or sass. For a second her eyes flashed as she wondered what he would do if she swept his legs out from under him and made him fall on his ass and smash that precious wine bottle. He would have to hurt her then, right? But that would only be in the immediate future and then what? Probably something much more humiliating than this. She hoped he appreciated how hard it was for her to be good. She bent down, touched her tongue to the liquid, and decided she would never tease Levi about his OCD cleanliness again. She was very grateful that the floor was nearly perfectly clean but for the spilled wine.

As she lapped at the puddle in broad strokes, pressing her tongue against the stone, she had a flashback to the only other time he had made her do anything like this – when he'd made her lick the kitchen floor and she'd moaned at the feeling of his boot against her back. She thought that he was probably right – that she was spoiled. Or just taking it for granted that she could get his attention in whatever form she wanted whenever she wanted. She liked that he was shattering that illusion for her. It made everything feel new again. Made her heart race. Made her feel lucky to have something that she wanted and cared about.

Erna lapped up the excess, felt pretty pleased with herself, and looked up at Levi, awaiting his approval and fully expecting praise of some sort. What she got instead was a cold glare and a "Does that look fucking clean to you?"

Her heart sank a little. She went to lower her head again. He helped her out, pushing her face down against the floor with his boot. She found her face pressed on its side against the floor. He pushed it around a little and used her hair as a sort of mop as he said, "There are two things I can't tolerate: Filth and the waste of good wine."

When the force pushing her head down disappeared, Erna rose slowly to her knees, feeling pretty dejected and miserable and showing it all on her face with pouty lips and pleading eyes.

Levi carelessly tipped the bottle to his lips again. It was almost half empty. He glanced at her and asked, "Did you want to say something?"

Erna hesitated for a moment, but went ahead and spoke. "Can I make a request?" That seemed humble enough to be safe.

He raised an eyebrow at her disdainfully. "Only because I'm curious. Go ahead." He looked at the bottle, trying to decide if he should go ahead and drink more or save it.

"Can I take a shower?" there was a pleading, whining quality to her voice. "Please?"

Levi decided to save the wine. He walked past her and set the bottle on the coffee table. He toyed with her. "Do you think that sounds fair? I haven't gotten to shower yet. You keep me busy."

Her tone turned desperate. "Please? It's all sticky and gross and I hate it. This is the worst. I promise I'll be good. I won't be a bitch anymore or try to manipulate you. I'm sooo sorry, please just let me wash my hair." She didn't mind dirt, but being sticky and wet with wine was something else entirely.

He moved to stand in front of her again. He smirked, "Oh you don't need to promise. I'm not even done punishing you. When I am, I'm sure you'll be too afraid to be anything but my good little slut."

She squirmed and rubbed her thighs together, stifling a small moan from escaping her mouth. She loved when he threatened her, but she really felt like she couldn't stand it another second. "Please?" she tried again.

He sighed as if this really put him out. "Go ahead, only because the sight of you disgusts me." He lied. She still looked beautiful to him even when she was a mess.

The insult didn't faze her in the slightest. She hopped up, excited at the prospect of a little hot water and soap. No matter how much he tore her down, she still had a lot of spark.

* * *

 

Erwin Smith was the kind of man who needed to keep moving. If he had work to do, he did it all at a fast clip, never resting, and the more he worked the more he couldn't let himself take a moment because if he sat down or took a breather, he wouldn't be able to get back up. So when he arrived at Levi's door, it was straight from seeing that every last thing was taken care of and sorted and being assured that not one more detail needed his attention. He rapped one courtesy knock on the door before entering, immediately stepping to the side of the door and removing his boots – he knew the rules too well. He'd been reminded many times. He hadn't had reason to visit since Erna had moved in though, so it was a little disorienting to see two pairs of boots next to the door.

It was a lot more disorienting when he actually looked up to see the scene in the living room of Levi, sitting on the couch – at a passing glance, Erwin's brain interpreted the shape on the floor in front of Levi's feet as the coffee table, because the brain will often alter the interpretation of a strange image so that it makes sense. But when he forced himself to really look instead he saw in reality that the coffee table was Erna, naked on her hands and knees, blindfolded and gagged, a tray with a wine bottle and glasses balanced on her back. Levi had one arm lazily draped over the back of the couch. He nodded to acknowledge Erwin's presence and then leaned forward, picked up the already uncorked wine bottle and poured him a glass as if everything was completely and utterly normal.

Erwin didn't even know what to say. He started speaking anyway. "Levi…"

Levi extended his hand with the wine glass out for Erwin to take it. "What?" He looked like he really didn't know.

Erwin closed his eyes, pinched the bridge of his nose, and sighed. He couldn't even tell if this was one of those times where Levi was fucking with him or not. He was too good at maintaining that blank expression.

"What?" Levi asked again, this time having the gall to sound annoyed, as if Erwin was the one behaving strangely.

Erwin opened his eyes, gave Levi a serious look, lips set in a straight line and brow knitted, and he nodded at Erna. He wasn't going to ask. He shouldn't have to. He raised an eyebrow, waiting for an explanation.

Levi rested the wine glass on his knee, still looking as if he didn't get what Erwin's deal was. He followed the commander's gaze down and actually looked surprised for a moment when his eyes rested on Erna. "Oh, that. I completely forgot she was there. Don't pay any attention to her, she's not a person right now. She can't even hear you." He tapped his ear as he explained, "Earplugs."

Erwin brought his palm to his face and shook his head. Levi went on, "I thought you were looking at me weird because of the clothes or something."

Again Erwin couldn't tell if Levi was fucking with him. He sounded like he was being genuine, but this was also his sense of humor. Completely dry, deadpan, never leaving any hints as to whether he was being serious or sarcastic and watching people squirm because of it. If this was one of those moments where he was trying to be shocking and make him uncomfortable, Erwin was determined to not give him the satisfaction. He kept his face stoic, strode over to Levi, taking the offered wine glass and setting himself in an arm chair. He fought the impulse to drain the glass in one gulp. He answered Levi, "It  _is_  always strange seeing you out of uniform. Sometimes I barely recognize you without the cravat."

After he had showered, Levi had thrown on a pair of grey slacks and a black button-down shirt. Leaving the cuffs and collar unbuttoned was as casual as he got. Erwin was right, usually if he wasn't wearing the uniform, he was naked. He refilled his own glass on the tray on Erna's back and held it up, " _Santé_." ("Cheers" in French / literally "Health.")

Erwin nodded and raised his glass, " _Prost_." ("Cheers" in German)

"I'm never out of uniform anymore. All I do is work and sleep," Levi said after taking a long sip of the Syrah. He was determined to drain the bottle before the end of the night. He hated re-corking wine.

"And this?" Erwin nodded towards Erna, who had remained perfectly still this entire time, not even breathing noticeably. Erwin could actually almost see how Levi could have forgotten about her.

"This isn't routine," Levi answered, looking down at her almost regretfully. "She's being punished." He drained his glass and set it back on the tray. He changed the subject. "You didn't bring cigars."

"I didn't stop at my room. Besides, you're supposed to be bribing  _me_." Erwin didn't ask why Levi was punishing Erna. Though he did wonder, he didn't want to seem too interested. As Levi got up to go search through his pack over in the corner, he watched her intently. He didn't want to be caught staring, but it was naturally difficult to look away from something so unusual. At least that's what he told himself. He didn't want to admit to himself that seeing Erna completely senseless and objectified did anything for him – that in this way she was much more appealing to him. She was parallel to the couch, so she was facing him in the armchair. He let his eyes roam over her face. A white cloth was tied tight around her eyes, probably Levi's cravat, and her pretty mouth was stretched around a black ball gag so that she could make very little recognizable expression with her face. He couldn't tell if she was thinking or feeling anything and he preferred it that way. As Levi removed bottles from his pack, looking for something particular, Erwin had to ask, "Where did you even get a ball gag anyway?"

Levi's immediate retort was, "Why? Do you want one?"

That shut Erwin up. He drained his wine glass. Then he cursed himself in his head. He had trapped himself. Now he needed a refill. If he didn't take the bottle from the tray on Erna's back, Levi would know he had succeeded in making him uncomfortable and he would love that. Making people uncomfortable seemed to be his favorite pastime next to killing titans.

Erwin got up from his seat and took the bottle of Syrah off of Erna without hesitation, quickly trying to ignore the curve of her back and her perfectly pale, smooth skin. He went to refill his glass, then stopped, holding the bottle out and noticing how little was left. "You drank all of this?"

Levi didn't even turn around. "Yes. I'm fairly shitfaced."

Erwin smiled and poured the last of it into his glass. He should have guessed. It was difficult to tell when Levi was actually drunk with the single facial expression and tone of voice, and he never slurred or stumbled, but there were tiny hints Erwin had learned to pick up on after so many times drinking with him. He could be slightly more amiable when drunk – not much. Not enough to be a friendly person, but enough to be relatively friendly for him. Back when they had more time and drank together more, Mike and Hange had observed that drinking made Levi drastically more compulsive and aggressive about the cleaning. Hange's theory was that lowered inhibitions for Levi meant a lowered grasp on the control he had over his mysophobia and OCD, but when she'd made that observation to a sober Levi, he had calmly taken her glasses and crushed them to pieces, so it wasn't something they talked about. Erwin also thought he had a tendency to joke more, but it was still impossible to tell when he was joking or not, so he wasn't completely sure about that one. But he did know that Levi liked to smoke when he was drunk. That must have been why he brought up the cigars. Erwin kept them in his office for whatever could be counted as a special occasion, though those were few and far between, so mostly the cigars were there for when Levi got drunk enough to barge into Erwin's office and demand he smoke one with him, which was a rare enough occurrence to be counted as a kind of special occasion.

After ripping open the other pack, Levi found what he was looking for. He took a bottle in each hand and walked over to hold them out to Erwin. "You can have the Merlot or the Cabernet."

Erwin frowned slightly and furrowed his brow. "There weren't any whites?"

Levi scowled at him, "White wine is shit." He dropped the bottles to his sides. "There was plenty, but I didn't take any of it. I wasn't planning on needing any graft for you."

Erwin clucked his tongue, "Poor planning then." He reached for the Cabernet, taking it and offering the empty Syrah bottle in exchange.

Levi took the empty bottle and carelessly threw it into the fireplace. "The  _plan_  was to get back here after sunset and go the fuck to sleep. Not get back early and have you hanging on my dick about reports." He patted his pockets, trying to remember which one he'd put the corkscrew in and muttering, "Next time I'll get you a fruity fucking Riesling or some shit."

"How did you get back so far ahead of schedule anyway?"

Levi found the corkscrew in his shirt pocket. As he screwed it into the bottle of Merlot Erwin had passed up, he muttered "…was a fucking shitshow." He popped the cork out, tossed that into the fireplace too. He pointed at the bottle in Erwin's hand with the corkscrew and asked, "Are you drinking that now? Or," he held up the Merlot, "do I have to share this?"

Erwin smiled. He wasn't going to let Levi drink an entire new bottle by himself even if his tolerance was very high for a man of his stature. He didn't say that. He just held his glass out and let Levi refill it. He sat down in the armchair again and asked, "How could it have been that bad? You didn't even lose anyone."

"Lost my fucking sanity…" Levi muttered to himself as he put the corkscrew back in his pocket. "We got back so early because this one," he pointed to Erna with the bottle before filling his glass, "and fucking Shit-Glasses woke everyone up at the ass-crack of dawn, let a titan go full wrecking ball on about an eighth of the large buildings in the town before killing it." He stepped around Erna and slumped on the couch. "I don't mind killing all of the giant, ugly, human-eating monsters we come across, but I can't fucking control your batshit insane troops. My hair's going to start turning grey. This is supposed to be your shitty job. They should be driving you crazy."

Erwin smiled warmly, "You can handle it." He watched Levi drain his glass and refill it. He drank a little faster to keep up. "Besides, can't be as bad as you, Hange, and Mike used to be. I've earned a break."

"Mikasa tried to kill Kirschtein." Levi leaned over and handed Erwin the bottle.

"You ran a gambling ring in your barracks." Erwin replied.

"Harmless card games. You're exaggerating."

"You took all the money you won, which amounted to about 60% of the entire Survey Corps' earnings for that month, and used it to buy more cleaning supplies."

Levi pointed at Erna again, "This one smashed four priceless wine bottles just to try and get a rise out of me."

Erwin countered that. "Hange accidentally made a stink bomb in her lab and we had to evacuate headquarters."

"And weren't you glad for the extra cleaning supplies then?" Levi smiled.

Erwin had a nearly endless list. "You and Mike stole stationary from my desk and sent out a memo that said all female troops from then on were to address me as… What was it? Commander Handsome?"

"It's Commander Eyebrows now."

Erwin frowned. He wasn't even going to dignify that with a response. He refilled his glass even though it wasn't completely empty yet. He went to put the bottle back on the table, forgetting for a second that the table was actually a person, it was either the wine or it was how incredibly still Erna was being. He gently set the bottle down, "And this. I can only think this is another of your childish attempts at making me uncomfortable. You're never going to grow up."

Levi was down to half a glass already. He drank wine like it was water and he was a man on fire. "Oh, everything's about you, isn't it?" he sneered. "No, I wasn't even thinking about it." He gulped down the rest of what was in his glass and brought his legs up onto the couch, hooking his arm over the back and dangling the empty glass. He tilted his head back, closed his eyes, and groaned. "She's too fucking good at being a table. I wasn't lying when I said I forgot she was there."

Erwin's gaze trailed over Erna's face, the wine made him feel less inhibited about staring. He was nearly faultless in his professionalism and had never felt tempted to look at his recruits as sexual objects. It wasn't even the fact that it would be unethical, which it would with his position of power. It was easy for him to be celibate because he never even felt tempted. He had as much of a distaste for dealing with human feelings as Levi had for dirt, and sex always came with too many emotions attached with it to seem appealing. He took in Erna's slight curves, beautiful and delicate-looking in a way he had never registered before, he found it much easier to appreciate her body with some of her humanity stripped away by the extreme objectification. This way she was like a beautiful, fuckable piece of art instead of a complicated mess of feelings and motivations.

Levi lifted his head, opening his eyes again, caught Erwin's staring and smirked at him. "I'm sorry."

Erwin shifted in the chair uncomfortably, not only because he'd been caught off guard lost in thoughts he normally didn't entertain, but also he'd never heard Levi apologize for anything. "What for?"

"I should have realized this would be problematic for you." He reached out and tapped the tray on Erna's back twice. Her muscles stiffened momentarily. He tilted his head back again and waved his empty glass around. "It doesn't really do anything for me, which is why I forgot about her being there, but it makes sense that this would push your fetish buttons. Of course you would prefer for people to be things. I should have thought of that earlier."

Erwin tried to lie. "I was only staring because I was concerned about how long you've left her there like that. It looks like a painful position to hold." He kept his tone aloof.

"If that's the reason you're pitching half a tent over there, then you're as much a sadist as I am." Levi gestured towards the bulge in Erwin's crotch with his empty glass before taking the Merlot and filling it again. He got up and went over to the fireplace, setting the bottle down on the mantle.

Erwin winced a little. He was cornered with no way to back pedal. He closed his eyes, pinched the bridge of his nose, and smiled. "You caught me. Are you happy now?" He thought if he at least honestly acknowledged it then Levi would drop the subject.

"Very, actually." He leaned against the fireplace mantle, bringing his fingertips to his forehead and seeming to think for a second. He drank some more, took a sidelong glance at Erwin, caught him staring again. "If you're so worried about her discomfort, there is actually something you could do that would make me mitigate her punishment."

Erwin looked at Levi, raised an eyebrow in inquiry. He didn't think it could be anything good.

"Don't look so concerned. Basically all you have to do is hold still." Levi returned to the couch, took the silver tray off of Erna's back and set it on a side table. She shifted a little, trying to distribute some of her weight off of her knees and elbows, relaxed her neck slightly.

Levi reached out and tucked a curl behind her ear. She leaned into his hand, supple and yielding. He watched her as he said, "This actually works out perfectly. I wish I'd planned it. I've been trying to share her, but she's so fucking resistant to it." Erna stretched her arms out in front of her, lowering her chin to the floor in a slinky stretch exactly like a cat. Levi smiled a little evilly, "I'm thinking a few hours of sensory deprivation has probably made her more open and agreeable."

Erwin started to open his mouth to ask exactly what Levi was talking about, but he stopped himself when Levi took out one of Erna's earplugs and leaned over her asking, "Do you want to be a fucktoy again instead of a piece of furniture?" She didn't try to make a sound around the ball gag, she just nodded her head in the affirmative. Levi grabbed her by her hair and gave her a pull to make her crawl forward to Erwin until she was on her knees in front of his chair. He leaned down again to tell her, "All you have to do is suck someone else's cock and I'll be done punishing you. Fair?" He replaced the earplug, he still didn't want her to hear or see anything, but he removed the ball gag and gave her a shove forward. Her hands flew out in front of her, catching herself on Erwin's lap. He lifted his wine glass before she could make him spill it. Levi took the glass from his hand, tipped his head back, drank all that was left in it, and moved back to the mantelpiece to retrieve the wine again.

Erwin was in total shock. He looked at Levi, who was now facing away from him and pouring himself another glass, then back down at Erna who was shifting herself to kneel more comfortably and running her hands over his legs, trying to get her bearings.

Erwin said to Levi's back, trying to sound nonchalant and stoic still, "I would have pinned you for the more jealously possessive type."

Levi turned and smirked slightly, "And I thought you knew me so well. I'm much more perverted than you give me credit for."

Erna rested her hands on Erwin's knees, pushed them apart, and settled herself between his legs. She splayed her fingers out and ran them up his thighs, pressing down as if she were trying to feel the contours of his muscles. Levi strode over quickly and gave her a sharp smack on the thigh, making her yelp. Erwin gave him a look and he explained, "She's trying to figure out who you are. If you want to be anonymous, don't let her fuck around."

The smack seemed to be enough to get that message across though. Erna made no further delay in finding Erwin's bulge, tearing at his buttons, and tugging at his pants insistently. He gave Levi one last look, "You're sure?"

"Have you known me to ever be unsure of anything?"

Erwin conceded, "Good point." He raised his hips a little to let Erna hook her fingers into the waist of his pants and underwear and pull them down and off completely in one swift motion. He hummed as her hand found his shaft and she lightly ran her fingers up, over the head, and back down to grip at the base and pump slowly, only halfway up and down. He sighed and leaned back in the chair, stretching his legs out a little and letting her pick her own pace. Even though it had been a long time since his last one night stand in the city, he had no trouble being patient.

Levi went back to the fireplace again, dispensing with glasses, he took the Merlot and drank directly from the bottle. He was surprised he hadn't thought of the blindfold thing before. This way, when Erna woke up in the morning she would be crazy wondering who she had sucked off. He smirked to himself, thinking about how long he would let her wonder. Maybe he would never tell her.

Erna held Erwin's cock at the base and curled her tongue around the side, gliding it up and flicking over the slit before flattening it against the underside of his shaft and lapping at it in long strokes. His eyes half closed, he enjoyed letting her toy with it. He was a larger than average man and his cock was about proportional to his body, if not a little bigger than necessary, but it looked even bigger juxtaposed against her small, delicate fingers and petal pink lips. He wasn't even sure her jaw would be able to stretch enough to fit around it. She released her hand's grip on his base and finally took him in her mouth, only just barely, taking his head in her lips and sucking on it like a lollipop. He hummed and almost bucked his hips up to fuck past her lips and into her throat, but he restrained himself.

She tried to distract him with her tongue, swirling it around the head and flicking over the slit, pressing him against the roof of her mouth as she sucked a little harder. Meanwhile her hands strayed to his legs and abs. She rested one forearm on his thigh, trying to get a feel for how long his legs were and the other pushed his shirt up and out of the way. Her fingers splayed again as they tried to memorize the size and contours of muscles. He had no doubt that she was smart enough to figure him out if he let her take in enough information. He grabbed both of her wrists, took her hands off of him and lifted his hips to thrust a little further into her mouth, just as a warning. When he released her wrists, she slipped him out of her mouth, used one hand to swirl her saliva from around his head and down his shaft, pumping the upper half of his cock. She put the other free hand between her legs, giving up for now. She kept stroking his cock and she licked at his balls, gently and lazily sucking them into her mouth one at a time, making him moan out a "Fuck…"

Levi raised his eyebrows. He had literally never heard Erwin curse even once. He offered some advice. "If you don't get rough with her, she's just going to keep teasing you. She's trying to make you lose your mind."

Erwin inhaled sharply. "She's succeeding," he groaned. He laced his fingers in her hair and gently lifted her head up, guiding her mouth to the tip of his cock again and pressing against her lips. She parted her lips just a little to lick at his head again, but he pushed up past them and in until he hit the back of her mouth. He thrust a little shallowly, took hold of his base and angled his cock to stretch out her cheek before sliding it out with a pop and thrusting back in again before she could close her lips. He put both hands in her hair and guided her lips up and down his cock, he wanted to get it nice and lubricated before he tried fucking her mouth any deeper.

Levi felt he was done watching. He was too hard for just watching despite how much wine he'd consumed. He finished off the last few drops of the bottle in his hand and set it down. He unbuttoned his shirt, took off his pants, and folded them and set them on the couch because when he was drunk it was harder to fight that obsessive compulsion to keep everything neat. Erwin stayed focused on loosening up Erna's jaw as Levi got on his knees behind her, pulling her hips back and up. He wasn't even inside her yet, but she whimpered and moaned around Erwin's cock, making him throw his head back and hum and thrust further, hitting her throat. Levi guided her hips until his cock was pressing against her entrance. She was more than wet enough, but he didn't push into her. He just held the base of his cock steady for her. Since her mouth was occupied, he wanted her to beg for it with her body. He wanted her to fuck herself on it like a cock-hungry little slut. He didn't have to wait more than a second before she realized he wasn't slamming inside her and she rocked her hips back desperately.

Erwin bit his lip unconsciously as she keened and whined with his dick in her mouth. He wanted to feel those vocal chords around the tip of him. He tilted her head, angling it a little better, still keeping his rhythm fucking her mouth as she pressed herself onto Levi's cock. Levi didn't move or help her get it deeper. He just leaned back and watched her fuck herself, her hips rocking in the same rhythm as Erwin fucked his big fat cock into her mouth.

When Erwin hit up against the back of her mouth again and made her gag a little, her muscles stiffened and she tightened up around Levi's cock harder than he'd ever felt any of the times he made her come. He pitched forward, put his hand on the small of her back to hold her still, "Unh.. Fuck.. Fuck.. Hold on.." Erwin stopped, mildly concerned as Levi hooked an arm around Erna's waist and the other around one thigh, lifting her up while staying inside her and bringing her onto the couch with him, bending her over the armrest. Levi caught his breath, held Erna's hips for a few seconds, fought to keep her still as she kept trying to rock her hips and fuck herself. He gestured for Erwin to stand up. "Better position… can fuck her throat… without the gag reflex…"

Erwin smirked at how much Erna's little full body muscle spasm had thrown Levi off. He'd never seen him flustered.

Levi lost his grip for a second and Erna quickly thrust herself back again, taking him up to the base and rocking against him, making him throw his head back like he'd been punched. "Ah, fuck!" One hand flew to her waist and gripped her hard, holding her still again, "Give me a second, you little bitch!" He said it more to himself, knowing she couldn't hear him anyway. He gave her ass a hard smack to get his point across, but that didn't really help to encourage her to stay still. It had the opposite effect actually.

Erwin let out a low, slight chuckle at Levi's frustration. He stood up and moved to stand at the end of the couch. He put a hand on Erna's head and pulled her face a little over the edge of the armrest. He wasn't slow or gentle this time. He pushed right past her lips and all the way up to the base, feeling her go stiff as his cock pushed deep into her throat and cut off her air. He closed his eyes and hummed, rolling his hips forward a little, her nose pressed against his pelvic bone. He knotted his fist in her hair keeping a tight hold on her head as she struggled to pull away and breathe again. When he let her pop up, she took in deep gulps of air.

Levi raised an eyebrow, "Impressive. Just don't kill her."

Erwin simply nodded and when Erna's breathing wasn't so ragged, he tightened his fist in her hair and pushed past her lips again, thrusting into her throat and withdrawing so that she could find chances to breathe and he could still feel her throat tighten around his cock and vibrate as she moaned.

Levi stopped holding her & leaned back to let her fuck herself on his cock again. After a few minutes he felt like he was going mad. It felt incredible, but he kept getting up to the edge of cumming and then drifting back down because Erna kept trying to fuck herself faster and harder than Erwin was fucking her mouth. She would succeed for a bit, then get thrown off by the different tempos again, repeatedly getting him close and then losing it. After about the fifth time she picked up a fast rhythm and lost it, he concurrently lost his patience. He dug his fingers into her hips and slammed his entire length into her, making her moan and pushing her forward, making her choke her moan out around Erwin's cock.

Erwin's head tipped back, eyes closed as he cursed under his breath and rolled his hips forward wanting nothing more than to feel more of Erna's tight throat squeezing and moaning around him.

Levi didn't let up, didn't want to give her a chance to move on her own. Reached down and lightly rubbed fingers over her clit to discourage her from trying, let her know she'd get taken care of. She arched her back for him, melting around his hands as he drove into her again and again.

Erwin didn't pull back, he let his cock stay in her throat, her orgasm was building and she didn't care enough to try to fight for air. He let go of her hair and slid his hand down to her jaw, lightly clutching her neck and caressing her jawline with his thumb. Her tongue lolled and she relaxed, got more malleable, it was easier to stretch her out with his cock when he rocked his hips back and forward. There was less resistance, so he went faster. He couldn't tell if she was moaning and choking back screams for him or Levi anymore because she was turning pliable and shivering in ecstasy every time he blocked her airways as if she liked being choked on his cock.

She seemed to forget herself a little. Her jaw relaxed and she just barely grazed him with her teeth. Erwin's breathing and thrusting both became hurried and erratic. He almost forgot to take into consideration, "Levi… Where…?"

Levi was momentarily distracted from watching his cock ram into Erna. "Um… Fuck…" he hissed through his teeth. He looked around, but he had nothing. He didn't want to clean up a mess. "Just make her swallow it."

Erwin's voice was a low rumble, "Poor planning again." He laughed a little in between grunting and thrusting.

"Cocky prick." Levi slammed his cock into Erna up to the hilt as he leaned over her, grabbed the back of her head and pushed it down, choking her completely on Erwin's cock. Erwin immediately stopped any laughing and threw his head back, losing control and rutting into her throat in short, frantic thrusts. Levi thought that Erna came first, she held completely still for just a moment before trying to scream as her already tight little cunt contracted around him and dripped down his length. But Erwin came only a second, (if that) after, eyes glazing over completely and hunching over, hands going to Erna's hair and holding her there as he thrust forward to cum deep in her throat, giving her no choice about swallowing. He held himself there, head lolling back, forgetting all sense of self until Erna finally struggled and found his thigh with her nails, digging in and clawing at him. He pulled his still rock hard cock out of her throat and she frantically gasped for air.

The corners of Levi's lips curled up a little, "I told you… need to let her breathe occasionally."

"Oh my fucking god," Erwin muttered, completely in a daze. He'd fucking needed that. He took a few steps back, found the armchair, and sunk into it, feeling heavy and useless. He kept cursing under his breath.

Levi worked Erna's clit while he fucked her, trying to make her come again. It was normally so easy, he wondered what took her so long about it this time. His brow furrowed in thought. It couldn't be that she was tired; she'd been more tired than this times before when he'd coaxed a fourth or fifth orgasm from her. She was moaning and whimpering underneath him, digging her fingers into the cushions, but obviously not getting there. He was so preoccupied with it now, he wouldn't be able to cum until he could make her. Suddenly it dawned on him what the big difference was. Without breaking his rhythm, he leaned over her, popped the earplugs from her ears and fisted a handful of her hair, pulling her head back until her ear was close to his mouth. "You're not done. Come one more time for me, you filthy little whore."

She moaned and whimpered out unintelligibly something like  _I can't_. He pulled her hair back a little harder and brought his other hand back to smack her ass hard enough to leave a bright red hand mark. His voice was low in her ear, "I don't want to fucking hear that. Worthless little bitch. Fucking give it to me or you can stop being my fuck toy and go back to replacing the furniture." He nipped at her earlobe before whispering, " _Je vais tu ruiner, putain_." (I'm going to wreck you, you whore.")

That finally send her falling over the edge, crying out and shaking as another orgasm lashed through her. He kept going, fucking into her and brushing her clit with his fingers. Whispering in her ear, " _Petite salope chaude_ ," (Horny little slut) drawing it out, making her pant and spasm and quiver until it seemed like she would break.

His fingers tightened in her hair, he bit her shoulder and made her scream. He kept pumping her with his cock, mind going white until the very last second when he almost forgot to pull out. He felt his cock twitch and he panicked at the suddenness of it, pushed her off of it, whipped her around by her hair, thrust into her gasping mouth just in time. He didn't even realize a string of French curses were flowing from his mouth as he arched his back, loosening his grip on her hair as she gratefully and eagerly swallowed all of him.

Her cheeks hollowed and she sucked on his head just as he finished, which was too much and she knew it. He shuddered and drew his hips back, giving the side of her head a light shove with his hand. She straightened up on her knees and then slumped, nuzzling her face into the couch cushion, fucked out and exhausted, still panting for air. Levi put his feet on the floor, took a second, then stood up. His head swam. He scooped Erna's limp body up to carry her and she nuzzled into his chest, murmuring something impossible to understand. He told Erwin, "I'm putting her to bed."

Erwin gave him the okay sign. Levi gave him an irritated, quizzical look, annoyed that he was using hand signals rather than speaking. Erwin smirked at Levi's drunk forgetfulness and pointed at the discarded earplugs on the floor.

Levi's rolled his eyes at his own stupidity. He forgave himself the idiocy, blaming it on lust and wine. Without another word, he carried Erna into the bedroom and dropped her on the bed. She stretched out, curving and luxuriating in the feeling of something soft. While she got comfortable, he tried to sound stern. "I was going to make you sleep on the floor, but I put you through the wringer, so I guess you've earned the bed."

Erna gripped the comforter, wiggled under it and wrapped it around her, sighing happily, "Merci beaucoup." She tugged at the blindfold, lightly at first, but it was tight, so soon she was pulling hard at it.

"Here." He turned her head towards him, pressing her cheek to the mattress a little. "Don't fucking rip it…" He undid the knot at the back of her head. "… Impatient little bitch."

He went to put the cravat/blindfold away, but she grabbed his wrist tight and held him there. He looked down at her, surprised. Her eyes were closed and she was exhausted, but still had the energy to hold him there so she could ask dreamily, "Who was it?"

He smirked and tugged his wrist from her grasp with only a little difficulty as she drifted off to sleep. "Maybe I'll tell you someday if you're good."

He took a sheet and a pillow from the linen closet and went back out to the living room. Erwin was slumped in the armchair, head tilted back and eyes closed, but still awake. When he heard Levi, he stated matter of factly, "I'm sleeping on your couch."

Levi tossed the sheet and pillow into Erwin's chest, startling him out of his stupor. "Knock yourself out."

As Erwin removed his shirt and jacket, adding them to the pile with his pants and underwear and arranged himself on the couch, Levi tidied up the room. He wouldn't be able to sleep knowing everything was out of place. He moved the coffee table back, disposed of empty bottles and glasses, picked up his own discarded clothes and fought the urge to fold Erwin's into a neat pile. He felt a compulsion to dust and started moving things to do so, but Erwin grumbled, "Levi, go the fuck to sleep."

Levi paused, deciding whether to ignore him and keep cleaning or not. Erwin sensed the hesitation and added, "It's an order."

Levi couldn't resist sniping, "Yes sir, Commander Eyebrows." He gave the couch a kick as he walked past to go to the bedroom.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading this long, smutty thing.


	21. Coordinated Tactical Insubordination

"Are you okay?" Eren's voice cut through the dark of his room. He turned on his side to face towards Mikasa's cot on the floor, even though he couldn't see her through the pitch black.

She hadn't said a word to him since they got back, but he hadn't really said anything to her either. They'd passed by each other a few times and he'd tried to catch her eyes, give her a smile, brush her hand, anything. But she'd been unresponsive every time, avoiding his glances with her mysterious eyes and not reacting any time he touched her, acting as if he was a ghost… or she was.

He could hear her turn. He couldn't tell if it was towards or away from him.

"Mikasa…"

There was a tense silence for what felt like minutes to Eren. Finally, she answered his question with another question, spoken softly, "Do I smother you guys?"

"Yeah. You always have."

Eren wasn't going to lie to her. He never had before. He was probably the only person in the military who wasn't even a little afraid of her and so he felt that left it to him to be unfailingly honest with her. Everyone else was always trying to tiptoe around her and say what they thought she wanted to hear. He personally felt that was bullshit. Mikasa wasn't anything to be afraid of… Well, maybe a little afraid, but still…

He heard her turn again. He assumed it was away from him this time.

"Mikasa, don't be upset." He didn't know what else to say. He wished he'd pushed her to talk to him earlier when there was still some daylight to see by.

"Come here." It was a soft command, his voice reassuring. He didn't hear her make a move. He pushed the covers away and got up, sitting on the edge of the mattress and prepared to find her in the dark if he had to.

"Mikasa, come on…"

After a beat of silence he heard her breathe a sigh out through her nose and get up. Her weight sunk down onto the bed next to him. He put an arm around her waist and pulled her close until she relaxed and rested her head on his shoulder.

"You can do whatever you want. Whatever makes you happy. If you want to stay on top of me all the time and try to make all of my decisions for me and that makes you happy, then you should do that." He felt her muscles go limp. He squeezed his arm tighter around her and brought his hand up to ruffle her short, black hair. "I'm just not going to listen to you most of the time."

"You  _never_  listen to me," Mikasa said quietly. He thought he could feel her smile against his shoulder.

"Because I'm not scared of you." Eren pulled his legs back up into bed and pulled Mikasa to lie down with him.

"You should be," Mikasa teased, reminding him with those three words of all the times she had easily thrown him around or beaten him up when they were kids and that she still could now. But she didn't resist when he gave her a gentle pull. She let herself stretch out on the edge of the bed, facing away from him.

He didn't try to pull her closer, content that she was close enough that he would be able to tell what she was thinking in the dark.

"Nah, you wouldn't hurt me too badly. I'd shift into titan form and squish you, you know?" He yawned and closed his eyes.

Mikasa had the last word, "You can't even shift into titan form when you're  _trying_. That's why you don't have to sleep in the dungeon anymore. I'd like to see it. They'd put you back in the dungeon and I could have this room to myself."

Eren gave her a pinch at her waist. She reached back and shoved him hard against the wall that the bed was on so that she could have more room to stretch out.

* * *

 

Jean grunted as he rocked his hips a little, easing his cock in and out of Armin's tight lubed hole. He hunched over him, sliding his hand over his pale, slender but toned waist and under the small of his back to lift and angle his hips a little higher, tilting his ass up and trying a harder thrust.

"Unhh Jean!" Armin mewled and closed his eyes. Jean drank in the sight of him, wanton and thoughtless, panting and melting into his touch, frantically moving against him when he slowed down and teased him. He wasn't in the mood for teasing so much now when he gave Armin a few more thrusts and looked down to watch a bead of precum leak out his perfect, milky-white-but-terribly-hard-and-turning-a-dark-shade-of-pink-around-the-tip cock and onto his stomach.

Jean lifted Armin's hips a little more, getting his knees under them to keep Armin's ass up. He pushed in further as he leaned over and claimed the blonde's mouth hungrily, tongue pushing past his lips and teasing his mouth open to let out the moans he was trying to quiet. Armin's fingers found Jean's hair and lightly tangled themselves into it, gripping and tugging gently, weakly.

Jean withdrew his tongue and smirked against Armin's lips. He husked out a whisper, his lips still touching Armin's, "Try to keep your eyes open."

Jean slid his tongue over Armin's lips before trailing down to his neck and nipping at his collarbone, smiling evilly the whole time at the way it made Armin shudder and babble incoherently. He loved making him like this. For how reserved, analytical, and together he was the rest of the time, it was a huge contrast the way he so easily turned into a mindless, lust-driven bundle of moans and sensitive nerve endings for Jean when they were alone.

He drew himself up and Armin's fingers slid from his hair. Jean straightened his back and held Armin's thighs, fucking him a little harder and deeper, starting to lose his own sense of ego as he noticed Armin's cock twitch and leak out another bead of clear fluid. Armin had managed to keep his eyes at least half-open at Jean's request but then he noticed Jean staring. He blushed and closed his eyes again, still mindful enough to be embarrassed that he was getting off so easily just from being penetrated.

Jean groaned. There was something he loved about Armin's blushing, even though he simultaneously hated for him to actually feel embarrassed. He tightened his grip on Armin's thigh, holding it tight against him as he reached down to very lightly fist his weeping cock. Armin automatically bucked up into Jean's hand frantically enough to alter the angle of his hips so that on the next stroke, Jean brushed against his prostate. Armin's body went tense and he had to clamp his hands over his mouth to muffle his cries.

Jean leaned over him again, keeping his cock bottomed out inside Armin, refusing to move it another inch until he got one thing clear. He pulled Armin's hands away from his mouth and pinned them above his head easily with one hand, the other hand gripped his cock a little tighter to further grab his attention and pull his focus off of his shame.

"I don't care who hears you," it came out as a growl from deep in his throat.

Armin worried his lip, scrunched his face trying to stifle the sounds he couldn't help making. Jean tore his eyes away from the blonde's face and turned his attention to his cock. He could feel it straining and twitching in his hand. He ran his thumb over the head slicked with precum and gave Armin a slow, light stroke, and that was all he needed to make him lose control. Armin let out a long, delicious moan and bucked his hips, rubbing desperately against Jean's hand and causing Jean's cock to hit close to that spot inside him again. Armin was making himself shiver.

"Fuck, Armin." Jean bit his lip. He closed his eyes for a second, collecting all of his self-restraint to keep himself from mercilessly stabbing at Armin's prostate with the head of his cock and forcing the cum out of him. "You're so beautiful." He thought he could feel Armin's temperature rise as his full body blush got brighter.

"Nnhh.. Jean.." Armin pleaded. He rolled his hips weakly.

"I'm not moving until you open your eyes and look at me."

Armin's teeth didn't leave his lower lip, but he did manage to flutter his eyelids open and stare wide-eyed up at Jean who rewarded him by dragging his cock out of him, letting him feel the emptiness for only a second before pushing back in fast. He stroked Armin's cock in sync with his renewed thrusting, using the frustrated blonde's precum as lube with great effect. Poor Armin arched his back which only caused Jean's cock to angle nearer to hitting his prostate more dead on and turn him into a twitching, moaning mess. His eyes started to roll back into his head and his eyelids fluttered closed again. Jean let go of his hip to slide two fingers over Armin's lips and into his mouth, hooking them to press against his wet tongue and tug him by his chin to tilt his head back up, making him remember to open his eyes again.

Something about Jean's fingers in his mouth made Armin feel immodest enough to forget about the embarrassment at the situation. He focused his languid, dilated pupils on Jean's face and hummed as he sucked on his digits, swirling his tongue around them and coating them in saliva.

Jean watched him whimper and pant at each body-shaking thrust of his hips with rapt attention. He couldn't hold back anymore with those big blue eyes looking up at him. He tightened up his grip on Armin and sped up, almost insistently milking the cum out of him. He shuddered as he watched Armin's eyes track downward, half-lidded and lazy, but still aware enough to blush redder at his own cum-covered abs. Jean lost it. He hooked his fingers in Armin's mouth almost as if to gain traction as he pushed further into the blonde and painted his inside with his own release, grunting and arching his back and ultimately withdrawing and falling to the mattress on his side.

Jean saw spots and fought to bring his heart down to a normal pace as his chest rose and fell with deep breaths. Armin stayed lying on his back, content to close his eyes and lazily play with Jean's hair. Jean draped an arm and a leg over Armin and playfully nipped at his jawline before whispering in his ear, "This bed is too small."

Armin cooed quietly, "Always complaining."

"When I'm a squad leader, I'll get an apartment, and we'll have a decent-sized bed in a room eight times the size of this closet," Jean promised. He nuzzled his face into Armin's hair and inhaled. The way Armin smelled was pure comfort and relaxation to him.

"And we can have people over," Armin added thoughtfully. Jean could hear the analytical, logical, reasonable tone coming back to his voice. Afterglow fading.

"Whatever you want," Jean mumbled into Armin's hair.

There was silence for a few seconds. Jean could feel him holding back. He pulled Armin in a little closer and nudged the side of his head with his nose. "What is it?"

"We should hang out with them more."

Jean wished he had just drifted off to sleep without asking. "Please tell me you weren't thinking about your friends while I had my dick inside you."

Armin laughed. "I promise I wasn't thinking about  _anything_."

"Don't we see them enough? If you think about it, we basically live  _and_  work together," Jean grumbled.

Armin nuzzled his cheek against Jean's forehead. "But we never do anything social together. We should do something fun."

"Where? How? What are we going to do? It's not like we can have a dinner party." Jean mumbled. He could just picture that. With their friends it would quickly devolve into shouting and throwing food. The real question was who would be the one to flip the table before anyone else.

Armin's elbow nudged him in the ribs with an elbow and got up to go clean up when Jean untangled himself from him.

"I'll think of something."

* * *

 

Erna didn't dream about anything. Her brain didn't have the energy to come up with sounds or images that weren't there. Sleep was a black nothingness that she was content to float in. And it _did_  feel like floating. She started to wake up when she heard Levi get out of bed and pad out of the room, but it was a slow process. She couldn't open her eyes. Her breathing came only slowly and deeply as if there were a weight on her chest. She felt she didn't know which way was down or up, like she was sinking too deep in water and couldn't find the surface anymore.

She heard Levi come back in and then the sound of some rustling fabric being thrown into the hamper. When his weight returned to his side of the bed, she found the will to move her limbs even though they felt like lead. When her hand found him everything snapped into place, like he was an anchor point. She could feel gravity again and her bearings came back to her as she moved her arm around his chest and pulled herself into him, hooking a leg over his and nuzzling into his neck.

Her attempt at cuddling was violently cut short as Levi made a disgusted groaning sound and pushed her face away. "Tch. Your hair still smells like wine. You're going to make me puke."

Erna opened her eyes finally when he withdrew his palm from her face. His eyes were still closed tight, so he didn't acknowledge the scowl she directed at him. She pushed herself to sit up and pulled on a curl, stretching it to her nose to see if he was right. He was. Her hair had a distinct oaky red wine smell, which he probably would have loved if he weren't so hungover.

She stuck her tongue out at him, something she wouldn't have done if his eyes hadn't been closed. "I washed it as well as I could in the five minutes you gave me to shower," she sniped as she twirled the thick jet black curl around her finger, stretched it taut again and released it.

He didn't react at all to her snotty tone. Either he was already asleep again or he didn't want to start in with her in his hungover state. She felt a little bad for him even though he did it to himself. She made her voice soft in case he was asleep, "I'll go wash it again."

She turned and stretched her legs out to slide off the other side of the bed, but she was stopped by the all too familiar feeling of his hand clamped tightly around her wrist. She turned around. His eyes were still closed.

"Stay in bed. Just keep your hair away from my face." He lifted her arm roughly and pulled her back over to him, dragging her down until her face fell to his chest, far enough away from his nose to not be bothersome apparently.

The way he manhandled her and the way his hard, well defined muscles felt under her fingers as she ran them over his shoulders and down his arms to push herself up and adjust to get comfortable triggered that basic needing feeling in her. Very quickly, darting her tongue out to lick his collarbone and then trailing it downwards to his abs started to seem like the most urgent thing in the world.

Her only plan had been to taste his skin and feel those muscles against her tongue, she hadn't thought further ahead than that to what the most likely result of her actions would be. She wasn't in the habit of thinking things through, but it made sense that Levi would put his hands on her head to push her downwards while lifting his hips a little, signaling that he wanted her to suck his cock.

Erna pulled away, escaping the pressure from his hands on her head and drawing herself up. She looked regretfully at his hard cock and she whined at it, "I can't."

That, he felt, was worthy of finally opening his eyes, but he winced at the daylight and closed one, reducing the ache from the brightness by half. He regarded her with one eye open, looking out at her from beneath unkempt bed hair, and asked, "The fuck do you mean you can't?"

Erna brought her hand up and wiggled her jaw around in demonstration, "My jaw hurts. So does my throat." She unconsciously held her breath while she remembered being enveloped in dark silence and the dizziness that came from lack of oxygen while Levi fucked her and pushed her forward into choking on someone else's cock.

She thought he would be mad or at least surly about it, but instead his lips curled up and he laughed silently through his nose before conceding, "Fair enough," closing his one open eye and looking pleased with himself. "I'm not fucking you though. I can't move."

"But I'm all…" Erna searched for an appropriate phrase, "worked up now." He smirked at that, but didn't offer a solution.

That was okay. She had her own solution if he was going to be adamant about not moving. She didn't intend to just walk away from an easy morning quickie with a weakened, relatively helpless, but hard Levi. She straddled his hips and reached down behind her to hold his cock, but before she could cant her hips back and even rub herself against him, she suddenly found herself thrown onto her back on the mattress again with Levi's forearm across her chest pinning her down.

"Don't you dare even _try_  to ride me. The room's already spinning with my eyes closed. You rock this bed and I am going to vomit all over you and everything, I promise." He took his arm away from her to crook his elbow, cover his eyes, and hiss in pain, "Shit."

Erna sat up and frowned. She wanted to scold him for drinking so much, but it would be useless. She doubted anything she could say would be more effective than the pain he was feeling anyway. Besides, scolding probably didn't work on him. It would probably only make him want to do the opposite of whatever she suggested because he was that immature sometimes, and there were still many more wine bottles out there in the living room.

"Well I'm not staying in bed then. I'm too awake now," she said over her shoulder as she turned away and bounced out of bed, on purpose, just to cause him more discomfort. She didn't feel  _that_ bad.

He groaned and turned on his side. "I don't care, just stop being such a shrill banshee, and pull the curtains, it's too goddamn bright."

Erna tiptoed to the window and did as instructed, pulling the dark, velvety curtains closed as she teased, "I could just blindfold you."

"No thanks. I wouldn't take to it as well as you do." He took his arm away from his eyes and let it lay limp on the bed. She wondered if that was true. If he really wouldn't enjoy the same things he did to her. She watched him lie there for a few seconds. Even when he was relaxing he had a tightly coiled way about him. She couldn't picture him being able to relax the way she did when physically restrained. She could only picture it making him paranoid. Too on edge. The opposite of the way it made her feel.

"I bet earplugs would help your headache," she mused as she crossed the room to close the curtains over the other window.

"We're not using those anymore. Apparently you can't cum without hearing me say humiliating things, petite salope soumise." ( _submissive little slut._ ) The corners of his lips twitched upwards as if he could see her shiver at that even with his eyes closed.

Even while sick and vulnerable, his sharp tongue could turn her legs weak. She gave up on teasing him; it was a battle she wasn't armed for as well as he was. She went over to the dresser and pulled clothes out, quickly getting dressed while Levi continued to sweat it out in bed. Just before she pulled a t-shirt over her head she noticed the random sheet and pillow case sitting on top of the clothes in the hamper. Her initial thought was that it was nothing. She started to turn around to go comb her hair, but she stopped. There was just the one pillow case in the hamper and there were always four pillows on the bed. Glancing at Levi one more time in her peripheral vision to check that his eyes were still closed, she snatched it from the hamper, turned on her heel and walked towards the bathroom.

She felt a little silly sneaking around, but she wanted to know the identity of the person whose cock had suffocated her the night before. Not even because she felt particularly concerned about it (mild curiosity was more like it), but only because Levi wouldn't tell and that drove her crazy. If he hadn't been snide about not telling her, she would have felt content to let it go, but now she wanted to prove that she could figure it out anyway and take away the pleasure he would get from holding it over her head.

She unwrinkled the fabric and turned it over and over, looking for hairs. She knew the size of the guy, roughly. Knew his thigh was something like twice the length of her forearm and well-muscled, but not tight and sharp like Levi. She whispered to herself, "Who are you, you big fucker…"

If she could get both size and hair color, that would narrow it down a lot. And, she thought, if could see everyone's cock that would end the inquiry quickly –  _that_  she had gotten a good feel for. He had been too big for her to wrap her fingers completely around and that couldn't be an overly common trait.

Her breath huffed out in frustration as she turned the pillowcase over again and inside out and still didn't find anything. She groaned and leaned her back against the wall, sliding down it a little and tilting her head back until she had another thought. She closed her eyes, lifted the pillowcase to her face, and inhaled deeply. Whoever it was, the guy wore at least a little cologne or something besides just sweat and soap - something that would be distinctly identifiable if she ran into it again.

But then her shoulders slumped. She couldn't go around smelling people as closely as she would require to be sure. She wasn't Mike.

The thought struck her like a titan and her whole body stiffened as the wave of anxiety rushed into her. She hit the back of her head against the wall. "Fuck… Mike…"

He was about the right height and the musculature was there. She groaned. If it was him, she didn't want to know. But she had to know now. Her curiosity was all itchy in her brain and she had to keep scratching at it. She neatly folded the pillowcase into a small flat square and tucked it under her shirt before finally going to the sink and brushing her teeth and hair.

Back in the bedroom again, she had no problem buckling the leather 3DMG straps in the darkness. She'd done it enough that it was second nature. She could do it upside down with her eyes closed if she had to. When Levi heard the clink of buckles, he turned in bed and opened his eyes. He propped himself up on an elbow and squinted at her through the dark, irritated. "The fuck are you doing in uniform? You have the day off."

She finished with the straps and got her 3DMG from near the window. She didn't bother hiding it anymore. Lately, she went with the strategy she'd learned from Eren. Act like you're not doing anything suspicious and no one will pay any attention to you. "3D Maneuver training. I don't want to get soft."

"You already are soft," he mumbled into the sheets.

She didn't dwell on which meaning he intended there. "I'm going to go down and get coffee. I'll bring you up tea and toast or whatever if you tell me who that was last night."

Levi was sitting up against the headboard now, eyes closed again and arm draped over his forehead, "You'll bring me tea because I fucking tell you to, mouthy little whore. If you didn't need to be blindfolded and sensory deprived for hours to get over your hang up about being fully used whatever way I want, you would know whose horse cock you were fucking choking on."

She squinted at him, tilted a hip, and regarded him in silence for a few moments. Then she quipped, "You're a little crankier when you're hungover, aren't you?"

He pointed at the door. "Tea."

"Fine." She finished putting her 3DMG together and turned to leave.

"And get dry toast… And bacon or whatever the fuck they have down there."

"Hai, Captain Levi," she said, her voice full of sarcasm. She added quietly under her breath, "I'll tell them it's for Humanity's Strongest Lush."

Not quietly enough. She heard the muffled thud of a pillow hitting the door hard just as she was closing it behind her.

* * *

 

Mike was making his way down the corridor, about to pass Levi's room when Erna emerged from it. He stopped to nod and politely say good morning, the same way he would with anyone, so he was a little taken aback by the flustered expression and the blush quickly spreading over her face when she looked up at him and mumbled "Morning," back.

He was about to ask if anything was the matter, but before he could get the words out she took a deep breath, seemed to steel herself with resolve. She stepped into him, grabbed a fistful of his shirt and pulled hard, causing him to bend at the waist so quickly he almost lost his balance and fell onto her. He was too shocked at her strength and the utter strangeness of what was happening to resist as she stood up a little on her toes, pressed her face to his neck, and took a long whiff of him as she ran her fingers down his chest and pressed them over his abdominal muscles.

Apparently satisfied, she let go of his shirt and let him straighten back up. He didn't even know what to think of what just happened. But she looked calm again, her face going back to its usual casual coldness and the blush disappearing. She crossed her arms and narrowed her eyes as if examining him, looking him up and down.

"You don't wear cologne, do you?"

He took a second to collect himself before processing the question and answering, "No." Even a tiny amount would be problematic with his sensitivity to smells. He didn't even use scented soap.

She seemed to sigh in relief and relax. Then, just when he thought the situation could not get any stranger, she pulled a folded square of fabric from under her shirt and held it out to him, asking "Can you smell this and tell me who it is?"

He was torn. On one hand, this was weird, which piqued his curiosity and made him want to see where it was going. On the other hand, he was sick of people treating him like some kind of hunting dog.

"Why?" he asked. He would only help her if he could get some satisfactory explanation of what was going on here, because he was sure it must be incredibly interesting. Even without getting closer he could smell Erwin's cologne all over the cloth she was holding.

Her eyes drifted downwards and she seemed to withdraw into herself, suddenly sounding uncharacteristically shy. "Just… reasons…"

Hardly satisfactory. He sidestepped around her and began to walk away. He needed to get away from all the competing smells coming off of her and from Levi's apartment. Caustic cleaning solutions, wine, sex, and pheromones. She grabbed him by the back of his shirt and pleaded. Without turning around, he sighed, starting to get annoyed.

"I'll tell you if you tell me why you need to know."

She sounded very conflicted. "I just… I can't…"

He turned his head, looked over his shoulder. She looked positively distraught. Very curious. "Sorry." He walked away, but now with a new course. What he had been on his way to do could wait. Now he was going to stop by Erwin's office instead.

* * *

 

"Food's in the living room. I figured you wouldn't eat in bed." Erna informed Levi as she went to the closet and got her jacket. She grabbed her cloak too, because the clouds were getting a little dark. It was going to rain buckets at some point  _or_  the sky would threaten to rain all day and not do anything. It was only 7:30am and it was already the warm, muggy kind of summer day where either event was equally as likely to happen.

Levi got out of bed and stretched. Erna stopped to stare at him. She liked watching him wake up. She didn't normally get to, since she always woke up later than him. She liked watching his muscles flex as he cracked and popped bones in his neck and back. He winced as he tilted his head to the left and his neck made a particularly loud grinding cracking noise.

"Tch." He rolled his shoulders and tilted his head back, seeming to check that everything was still in place and unbroken.

Erna brought her hand up to her lips to cover her smile. He caught her and there was an evil flash in his eyes as he asked, "You like that?"

Since she was caught, she dropped her hand. No point in hiding her smirk. She teased him, "I think it's sexy how old and broken you are."

"Come here." His voice was dark and smooth and clearly full of evil intent.

Erna hesitated, worried something awful was about to happen to her because of her 'old and broken' comment. She dropped her shoulders, resigned to her fate. She exhaled and crossed over to stand in front of him, tossing her jacket and cloak onto the bed.

Levi turned her around to face away from him and pulled her shoulders back.

"Relax."

She tried to. She never felt very relaxed when trying to guess what he was going to do. First waiting until enough of the tension left her muscles, his arms hooked through hers and he brought his hands to the back of her neck.

"Lean back."

She didn't like this. It was difficult to trust him. "You're not going to break my neck, are you?"

"Not today." He paused and seemed to think about that, then he specified, "Not right now anyway."

Good enough. She leaned back against his chest and he adjusted her position slightly, manipulating her neck and shoulders a little. Then he pulled her suddenly and drastically, jerking her up and causing her vertebrae in her upper back to shift and make a loud pop. She yelped because it was surprising, but it didn't actually hurt.

He let her go. "Good?"

She rolled her shoulders back and forward again. "Oh my god…"

He stepped away to start getting dressed.

Erna rolled her head around, still surprised at how much better everything felt from that one pop. "It's like I can breathe better…"

"You're welcome."

"I feel taller. Am I taller?"

"No. Your spine is straighter. I can't make you taller."

She stretched a little, rolling up on the balls of her feet. "This feels better than sex."

"Good. Next time I'm busy and you're being a needy slut, I'll just do that. Takes much less time," he grumbled as he got clothes out and pulled them on.

She exhaled and inhaled deeply. Finally starting to get over the novelty of the chiropractic adjustment, she picked up her jacket and cloak and slipped them on and over. She sat on the edge of the bed and watched Levi. He'd put on grey slacks and was just pulling a white cotton v-neck tee over his head. It was the most casual she had ever seen him dress. She was under the impression that he didn't own any shirts that didn't have buttons and collars and cuffs.

He reached into the closet, took out a black blazer and put it on, buttoned it and then looked over his shoulder at her, raising an eyebrow as if to ask what the fuck she was staring at.

Erna smiled. "That's more like what I'm used to."

Sometimes she couldn't decide if she liked him better in or out of clothes. She liked how even when he didn't have to wear a uniform he was never dressed down. And she was grateful that he didn't extend that aesthetic preference to her. She liked him being dressed formally, but she disliked wearing anything that would make her look nice. She was uncomfortable with the attention that would come with it. She wanted to be ignored by most people. Especially lately when she needed to hide what she was doing with her days.

She stood up to leave and Levi let her get all the way to the door before he told her to wait and she turned around. He pointed at the hamper. "What did you do with the pillowcase that was there?"

Her shoulders slumped. She huffed and pouted. "Can't you ever just not notice things?" She took it out from under her shirt, balled it up, and threw it back into the hamper.

Levi smirked at her. "Did you try to get Mike to scent it for you like a dog?"

She crossed her arms. If she was so predictable then she didn't have to answer him. She turned on her heel and stalked out the door.

* * *

 

Erwin pressed his forehead to the top of his desk. It was cool and eased the pounding in his head a bit. He heard footsteps approaching from the corridor and lifted his head and tried to look busy. When he saw it was just Mike, he relaxed and dropped the act.

He poured himself another glass of water from the pitcher on his desk as Mike sat in the chair across the desk from him, stretched his legs out and folded his hands behind his head. He waited for him to say something. The man had a smug grin on his face. Erwin was familiar with that look, whether it was on Mike's face or Hange's or Levi's, it always meant trouble for him. He could feel his authority fading away already.

Erwin stared at him and waited to see if he had anything to say, but Mike just kept grinning at him like the cat that ate the canary as he tilted the chair back and put his feet up on the desk. Erwin sighed and rubbed his temples. He finally asked, "What is it?"

"Odd thing just happened." Mike said, still grinning at Erwin with a twinkle in his eye.

Erwin put on his stoic, uninterested mask, sure that whatever the 'odd thing' was, it was going to be something that would test his patience and sanity because that's what it always was. "What's that?" He asked and then took a sip of water. He felt dehydrated from the wine and achey from the night of sleep on an uncomfortable couch and wasn't in the mood for his squad leaders' mischief.

Mike rocked back on the chair a little. "I ran into Erna."

Erwin's blood ran cold. He took another sip of water and acted as if this was completely unremarkable information. "Doesn't sound odd."

"She felt me up, smelled me, and then asked if I wear cologne." Mike was very amused.

"Well that is odd," Erwin said, trying to sound distracted and disinterested, but thinking that the look on Mike's face and the direction this conversation was going meant he was either already found out or he was going to be. He had hoped Erna would just be content to not know. He shouldn't have let her size him up… but her hands had felt good on his thighs. He shook his head. He needed to not think about it.

"You look sick." Mike sniffed. "You smell a little like wine."

"I'm fine," he responded tersely. He had showered when he got back to his apartment, but he hadn't cleaned himself as thoroughly as he would have had he known Mike would be trying to sniff out clues. Then he would have taken three showers. He opened a desk drawer. He could at least pretend to busy himself with funding applications or something until Mike left, which Erwin hoped he would do if he continued to get nothing but short, noncommittal answers. Then he could put his head on the desk again, wonder what life would have been like if he'd just become a teacher or something, and maybe try to quickly sleep off this hangover.

"It might just be me. When I saw her just now, Erna reeked of wine." Mike casually rocked on the chair a little more as he continued to toy with Erwin. "She also smelled like Levi… and sex… and you…"

Erwin's stoic mask cracked for a fraction of a second before he got it back together. "I'm sure you're mistaken somehow. Maybe you're getting a sinus infection."

"So the really odd thing -"

"That wasn't the odd part?"

"No. She just aggressively groped and smelled me. I don't see how that's odd."

Erwin stifled a groan. "I'm sorry. Of course you wouldn't. Please continue."

Mike explained, "She looked shaken. Seemed to be searching for someone in particular, but doesn't have anything to go on but the person's smell and the feel of their body."

"This is all very interesting, but I don't see why you're bringing it to me." Erwin laid a blank paper on the desk and took up a pen. He hoped against all reason that Mike really wasn't connecting it to him and was just giving him that smug grin because he found it interesting and was amused by the girl's behavior.

"I thought it involved you because she produced a piece of fabric and asked me to tell her who it smelled like."

Erwin froze. He tried to sound calm and only mildly curious. "Did you?"

Mike's grin grew wider. "If I did, she would be here right now instead of me."

Erwin folded his arms on the desk and laid his head on them in defeat. He groaned. He was too sick for this. "Mike, what do you want?"

Mike removed his feet from the desk, setting the chair straight and leaning forward, he rested his elbows on his knees. "Details."

Erwin kept his head down, but pointed at the door and grumbled, "Out."

"What do you think she'll do if I tell her? Have you thought about a replacement in case she kills you? I'd like to humbly nominate myself," Mike said with a wolfish grin on his face. Erwin knew he was in trouble when Mike started speaking in more full sentences. He rarely did that unless he was in a position to toy with people. A sick sense of humor was the only thing that made him more verbose.

Erwin lifted his head, gave Mike the most serious, Commander-ly look he could muster, and repeated himself, "Get out."

Mike was undeterred. "Fine. No details. Just tell me if it was good or not."

"I'm not doing this." Erwin wondered if it was too late to retire. Then Levi walked in the open door with Hange in tow. He thought that if he retired and moved to some small cabin in the middle of nowhere, they would still find him and make his life hell. No. He'd probably died on the last expedition and this was his purgatory. They were his punishment.

He attempted to take back some of the respect and authority he'd lost in the past five minutes. He looked past Mike to Levi. "Do you have that report?"

"Oh, yeah, no, wait," Levi said as he seemed to look for it, patting his pockets. "I've got it somewhere." He reached inside his blazer and brought out his raised middle finger.

Erwin just stared at him, straight faced and silent for a minute. Then he asked, "Did you come here solely to do that?"

Hange put her hands on Erwin's desk and leaned over bringing her face closer to his, as invasive of personal space as ever, "Levi said you'd be hungover and easier to negotiate with now. I have demands. Also grievances; how dare you two drink without us."

Mike looked at Levi, "Where did you get wine?"

"None of your business. I'm not sharing. It would be wasted on you two. You have no taste. Neither does Commander Eyebrows, but I needed to bribe him."

Erwin wondered how Levi was even standing. He'd drunk more than enough to kill a man his size. Nothing about Levi's size made sense. Nothing was in proportion with it. His strength was much greater than one would think, his attitude was that of someone much larger, and he could drink Erwin under the table without seeming to be in any pain the next day. The man was an anomaly.

Hange clucked her tongue, "Selfish."

Mike sniffed and responded, "I have excellent taste."

"My office isn't a forum for your bickering." Erwin tried to get them back on task, because he knew where this would go if he let it continue. Levi would say something extraordinarily rude, Mike would make a comment about Levi's height, Hange would play devil's advocate for either side and say anything that would egg them on because she was a fan of explosions.

They all stopped as if they couldn't remember why they were there if not for annoying Erwin. Then Hange remembered, "Oh yeah! So for my research, I want at least half of Mike's squad. I definitely need Armin at the very least if we're going to experiment on Eren, but I need a bigger research team in general since we're planning to have multiple titan subjects and as much as I would like to do everything by myself it just doesn't seem practical."

Levi added, "I say just dissolve the whole fucking team, give Hange who she wants and leave Mike free to help run shit, especially if she's going to be working with Eren. I'm going to be babysitting a lot and we need him to keep shit in order." Mike didn't seem to need to think about it, nodding in agreement readily. Erwin processed this. It wasn't an unreasonable demand, which was surprising. He had been expecting them to come at him with something ridiculous and irrational. He was almost suspicious at how well thought out this was.

"And do it sooner rather than later. You can't just throw those kids into the deep end with Hange suddenly. Let them adjust to her here at headquarters where they're relatively safe first."

Hange ignored Levi's implication that she was a danger to anyone but herself and cheerfully pulled a sheet of paper from her pocket and dropped it under his nose on the desk, "Here's my list!"

"And promote Kirschtein to team leader. We have more than enough people and he'd be at least halfway useful," Levi went on.

Erwin felt his head spinning. Anything to get them out of there. "Yes, okay? Yes to everything. Make the changes, get out of my office."

Hange looked back over her shoulder to Levi, retracted her list and put it back in her pocket. "You were right, that was easier than usual."

Those words made Erwin wake up and regain some of his composure again. She was right, he was making it easier for them than usual and he shouldn't be. He needed to be strong in the face of their eccentricities or they would run amok. "Wait, no." He sighed, tired and exasperated. "Where exactly do you want to put everyone?"

"You could just put them all into my research team." Hange always started negotiations by asking for much more than she knew he would be willing to give. That way, she seemed to think, the things she really wanted would seem more reasonable. It didn't work as well as she thought.

"Except Erna," Mike pointed out.

Erwin ran his fingers through his hair. He didn't know what to do with that girl and given the circumstances at the moment, he didn't want to think about it. He looked at Levi who shrugged and said, "If you put her back in my squad, she's only ever going to be good at one thing."

He was right. She was already a good soldier. And Levi was an excellent soldier. Humanity's strongest… but he couldn't train her to be anything more than that, and Erwin appreciated that it was probably hard for him to admit. "Mike?" he asked. Hoping the strategist had some brilliant idea he was just keeping quiet about until asked.

"She hasn't made much progress." Mike frowned.

"Because you can't let her fucking train herself. She's practicing 3D maneuvers now. The last fucking thing she needs to work on." This was the only way Erwin could tell Levi was feeling how much he'd drunk the night before. He might not appear as sick as he should, but his sudden snippiness was very likely to have a lot more to do with his physical state than any actual dissent with Mike's decision. He was always very respectful of the other squad leaders' decisions on what to do with the teams under them, especially so with Mike.

"She still has an inability to contradict authority. She even listened to Hange yesterday." Mike ignored Hange's offended gasp. "If you tell her what to do directly, she'll never get over that. You need to force her to make her own decisions. If she makes bad ones that's even better. People learn from making mistakes." Mike didn't offer options. He only stated the pertinent facts that should be taken into consideration when making a decision.

Erwin didn't know what to do in this case. It was highly unusual… even for the Survey Corps where everything was always highly unusual. He thought Erna had potential and he was greedy. If she could grasp tactics and strategy, then he wanted her to be a strategist and an elite soldier at the same time. There was no excuse for not using her as a squad leader by now except for her own stubborn resistance to it. "Move the rest of the squad to Hange. Erna will be Mike's only project until you three leave for Ralsog. If she isn't improved by then, we'll fold her into the new team."

Levi, who had been scowling, raised an eyebrow. "Under Kirschtein?" Erwin nodded. Levi seemed to perk up. "Oh that's good. She would hate that." He turned to Mike and told him, "You should threaten her with that. She responds well to threats."

"She has some intellectual curiosity at least. She did borrow some books and ask me about titans." Hange was murmuring to herself, only paying attention to about half of what they were saying. She took out her list and grabbed the pen from Erwin's desk, scribbling on it. "I wouldn't mind if you added her to my team too."

Hange was dangerous enough with the few competent people Erwin let her have and those people were chosen partially for their ability to rein the woman in and keep her relatively under control. He didn't want to imagine the chaos that could unfold if he gave her someone who would blindly follow her bidding with precision.

"That's a non-starter," he told her.

Hange made a disappointed sound and tossed the pen back to him. Erwin eyed each of them carefully.

"Is there anything else?"

Levi pushed for one more thing. "We need to go into the city. We need more shit if we're going to be out there in the middle of nowhere for months. Not just the shit we get in supply shipments. Important shit."

Mike crossed his arms, looked down at Levi and pulled his lips into a smug grin again, "Like tea?"

"Exactly like fucking tea," he snapped.

Erwin sighed. It was a self-serving idea on Levi's part, but it would be good to let the people who were slated to go with the research team into the city and get whatever personal amenities they might need. His motivations were selfish too. If they did it this way, then he wouldn't have to use Survey Corps funding to get anything that could be a necessity.

Mike felt suddenly very invested in this, "I'm going."

Levi looked to Erwin, "Don't let him go, he just wants to whore it up and get his dick wet."

Mike disputed the terminology, but not the intent. "I have devoted fans, not whores."

Levi couldn't resist picking at the man. He added, "Besides, he just came back from a vacation in the city."

"My bones were crushed. I was in a coma." Mike reminded him.

"Don't be dramatic. You were sleeping."

Hange piped up, siding with Levi and teasing Mike. "We should all be so lucky."

Erwin put his head in his hands and attempted to explain calmly, "Someone would need to stay here. I need to go inspire more favor in the higher ups. We don't even technically have approval for Hange's research proposal yet." He gave Levi a meaningful look. "So unless you think you can do that…"

Levi didn't even need to answer that. If he said that he could, he would be lying. But he wasn't going to let it go, "I'm not staying here."

Hange's eyes lit up and Erwin could almost see the maniacal gears in her head start turning at a dangerous speed, "I can stay here! I'll hold down the fort for you!"

Erwin was sure he would come back to nothing but a pile of rubble and ashes, but he couldn't care anymore. The pounding in his head was being aggravated by the hassle. "Good enough. Everyone's dismissed." Which meant  _Please take pity on me and leave…_

Hange kept chattering excitedly, "I just need you to take this new vine brew I made and let Pixis try it, then record the results. I've been holding onto it until I could see him again since you won't let me test on Survey Corps soldiers anymore."

Mike remembered the incident that led up to that ultimatum. "You almost killed my nose."

Hange huffed and rolled her eyes. "I didn't ask you to smell it, I asked you to  _drink_  it. You have no one to blame but yourself."

Erwin's fingernails dug into his palms. "Hange, I said no more vine brews at all. Not just that you couldn't use Survey Corps soldiers as test subjects."

"Well that's not what I got out of our conversation." She crossed her arms, giving him an accusing look, like it was his fault for not being clearer about it. "Anyway, it should be harmless."

"Hange…" Erwin spoke slowly and clearly. "No experiments while you're here on your own."

"Right, right," Hange confirmed noncommittally, waving him off.

"I mean it."

"Yeah, I got it. No experiments while you guys are on your field trip." Her gears started turning again. He could see the manic gleam in her eyes that meant she was planning something. "How long are you going to be gone anyway?" She tried to affect a tone to her voice that was nonchalant and innocent. It didn't work.

Erwin thought carefully. "I'm not leaving you alone for more than two days." Her face fell at that. So did Mike's. Crass as Levi was about his phrasing, he wasn't incorrect about Mike's motivation for requesting R&R time in the city. "There's a military ball in Stohess in two weeks. I have to go anyway. If I requested permission to go ahead with your project via message, it would be soundly rejected. It's better to go in person and persuade people."

"No one can reject Commander Handsome in person. Ooh and in a tux and everything! I'm rescinding my offer to stay here. Make Levi stay, he hates parties. I can go with you and explain to everyone how important my research is!" Hange hopped back and forth on her feet, flushed with excitement.

Levi rolled his eyes at her outburst and then at Erwin, "If I go, will I be forced to attend the aristocratic pig party?"

Finally something Erwin could torture him with. "Yes, under my order. And you'll have to be sociable and keep your vocabulary under control."

Levi grabbed Hange's arm, stopping her dancing, turning her to look at him so he could lock eyes with her. He paused and when she calmed down, he said very seriously, "Bring tea back. As much as you can."

Before Hange could get too excited again, Erwin had to crush her hopes. "Levi, you're going. Hange is staying here. As off-putting as your personality is, her unbridled enthusiasm tends to scare people more than your scowling."

"I can be scarier," Levi offered.

Erwin smiled. "I don't doubt that, but it's an order."

Levi bristled at that, but he went silent. Erwin had no doubt that he would go along as long as he made it an order. He wasn't just being cruel, it really was better if Levi and Mike went. People knew of them and were impressed by them, as much as Levi tried to reject any fame and recognition. While Hange may be much quicker and smarter than either of them, the people who he needed to persuade were generally uncomfortable with her obsessive and awkwardly enthusiastic tendencies. Even though she was the all-important key to unlocking Eren's control over his power and reclaiming wall Maria, it was better if she stayed uninvolved in the social politics of sucking up to the people who could enable that research to happen, as unfair as that was. That was the burden of being a genius.

As if she could read his thoughts, Hange got a very persecuted look on her face and sulked. Erwin wanted to keep her in a good mood, so he gave her something she wanted, "As compensation for taking temporary command here, Hange, I'll give Pixis your new experimental concoction and lift the ban on future vine brewing experiments and tests on Survey Corps soldiers."

Hange all but jumped for joy, cheering her signature 'yahoo.' When she calmed down, Erwin went on, "But you have to get a person's consent before experimenting on them. No slipping drugs into anyone's tea when they're not looking."

Hange pouted. She didn't miss the reference he was making to something that had happened about a year before. "I was trying to cure him of his OCD. I had to do a blind study to control for placebo effect."

"Don't do me any favors, Shit-Glasses." Levi crossed his arms. He hated it particularly when Hange pointed out his neuroses. Probably because she treated them with such scientific fascination where everyone else tread lightly around them, keeping things clean as a guard against risking his displeasure and never speaking of it blatantly to his face.

Hange changed course entirely, not wanting to dredge up any more mistakes she had made in experimenting on people lest Erwin change his mind about the leeway he'd just given her. "You should take Erna to the ball with you. She makes you more approachable. You two are all cute and angry. It would be adorable." She reached to ruffle his hair, but he slapped her hand away.

Levi didn't even consider it. "Bad idea. She's not civilized. She might bite someone. You'd need to vaccinate her first."

"She sniffed me this morning." Mike was telling Levi now, seeing if he could offer some kind of explanation where Erwin refused to.

"See? If she's acting like Mike, it's proof that she's not fit to be in public." Levi turned to see Mike sneer at him, then asked, "How did you sleep last night anyway? I found a better gag for the succubus, but I don't know how often I can use it since it stretched her jaw out too much." He gave Erwin a sidelong glance.

Erwin choked on the water he had been drinking. He pointed at the door and as he coughed, he told them all to get out. He'd had more than enough.

* * *

 

By the time Erna pulled herself most of the way up the wall her arms were shaking with the strain, but she forced herself to endure it. She was stubborn about not using the gas to make it easier. Especially since she didn't know what excuse she was going to use the next time her tanks were empty.

They were a nice failsafe though when her foot slipped on the rain-slicked wall and she started to fall. She fought against the instinct to grab the cable tighter and try to save herself with her hands. That would only burn the skin of her palms off, possibly destroy her fingers beyond recognition. She shot a leg out to kick away from the wall, crossed her arm to the trigger on her chest and shot the other hook up and into the top of the wall. Her jaw clenched in frustration at her weakness as she propelled her body up with the gas.

When she cleared the wall, she instantly had the wind knocked out of her as her body collided with Eren's. She wheezed and sucked air back into her lungs as she kicked and untangled her legs from his. He sat up, face pinched in pain as he rubbed the back of his head where it hit the wall.

Erna exploded. It was raining, she was annoyed with herself, and Eren presented a target for her to vent her frustration. She didn't allow herself to fully catch her breath again before she started yelling, "Fuck, Eren! Do you know what that does to my heart?! You're going to kill me if you keep doing that! Fucking stand away from the cables or something!"

Eren snapped right back at her, also not in a great mood since he was out here in the rain and she'd just knocked him flat on his ass. "I'm not going to kill you! Some titan is if you keep up this suicidal shit! I was hoping you wouldn't be dumb enough to go out there again and coming up here to look for you would be a waste of time, but here we are."

Unlike most people, being yelled at had a sobering effect on Erna. It made her check herself and melted her temper away. It was when everyone was calm or rational that she felt like yelling the most. That mechanism in her was the same reason that she had the impulse to go out on her own in the first place. She felt calm when everything was unsafe and precarious. Inversely, when things were calm she felt on edge and agitated. She took his hand and helped him up, disarming his anger as she told him for the umpteenth time not to worry about her.

"I'm fine. See?" She looked up at him when he stood. She held her arms out at her sides and spun around as proof. No blood, no bruises.

Eren was still pissed off, but he was less shouty. "You're fine now. What happens if you run into more titans than you can handle at once?"

Erna just shrugged. She had an answer to that, but it was a grim one and it probably wouldn't make him happy. So she kept it to herself.

He looked down the wall and motioned for her to follow him, which she was more than eager to do as the rain wasn't letting up. She was already cold and soaked to the bone. She'd been a couple of miles away when it had started raining large, heavy raindrops that stung as they pummeled her. Eren must not have been out there long because he was still pretty dry under his green cloak. Which made her wonder, "Why'd you come out here anyway?"

She asked him before they fell. He answered when they landed. "We were looking for you. Armin's planned something. You weren't in any of the usual places, so I figured you were outside the wall. Don't worry, I didn't tell anyone."

She was silent for a minute as they walked back. Then she had to ask, "When you say 'Armin's planned something'…?"

"He said we need to do something social – all of us together. We don't get to hang out as much since the roster change. Since we can't exactly have a party… Pretty much we're going to raid the squad leaders' offices for contraband and meet up somewhere we can hide. We've done it before."

Erna was hesitant. "And it's gone well in the past?"

"Oh hell no." Eren answered quickly. He didn't offer to elaborate.

"I don't think you can accuse me of having a death wish..." Erna mumbled under her breath. "This sounds more suicidal than fighting titans alone in the open."

"It's not. We're not hitting Levi's office this time," Eren said as if that settled it and meant that this was a perfectly sane plan. "I told them I would find you and we would sneak into Hange's office, since you and I have been in there the most."

Erna felt she was being pulled along by the tide. Better to drift with it than exhaust herself trying to fight it. "Mike keeps a bottle of whiskey in his desk."

"Jean's on that. Sasha and Connie are stealing food. Mikasa is hitting Erwin's office. Then we go to the basement."

"You mean the dungeon?"

Eren winced. "I don't like to call it that."

"Sorry." Erna was sincere. She'd forgotten that used to be his bedroom. It was easy to forget since he'd been sleeping above ground since before she met him. She could understand that the word 'dungeon' held too many negative connotations. It had been used as an actual dungeon once probably over a century ago, but for the Survey Corps it was mainly storage now. No one ever really went down there, which she guessed is what made it a good spot for secret parties.

"I just have to unload this stuff and put on dry clothes."

Eren started walking even faster and she had to jog to keep up. He said over his shoulder, "You're going to have to hurry. It's time sensitive. The squad leaders are in the dining hall now and we probably only have ten more minutes before Hange goes back to her office."

Erna was about to say that Hange shouldn't be in her office at all, it was an off day. But she remembered that it was Hange and of course she would be in there because she actually loved her work and she was probably in there or in her lab ninety percent of the time. "Well what if you just go get stuff from Hange's office and I'll go change?"

"That won't work. I need you to be a lookout or to distract her if she's already back in there by now, which she probably is."

Erna didn't like the sound of that one bit. "What do you mean distract her?"

"You know. Ask her about titans or something."

Erna stopped in her tracks, grabbed his cloak and turned him around, holding him there in the rain while she got one thing very clear, "I am  _not_  sacrificing myself to the 'Hange talking about titans' torture. I'd rather die. If anyone is going to be the distraction, it's you.  _I_  organized that office.  _I_  know where everything is."

Eren didn't want to admit that she was right. He didn't want to have to be subjected to Hange's endless talk either. "You can just tell me where everything is."

She glared at him, unmoving, her lips pressed into a thin line. He made a desperate attempt at pulling rank on her. "I have seniority here!"

"Well I have orders from Levi that I'm not allowed to talk to her anymore and he outranks you." She stuck her tongue out as punctuation on that sentence.

Eren pulled away from her and kept walking. "You know he probably wasn't being serious."

"No. I don't know. How the hell can anyone ever tell when he's joking?"

She had a point there, Eren conceded. In the end, when they got inside, it came down to rock, paper, scissors. Eren lost. Erna changed, dried off, and raided Hange's office while Eren martyred himself and distracted Hange by letting her talk at him.

* * *

 

The "basement" was really more like a dungeon, Erna thought. It was dark and cold and she could see why no one would ever go down there. She felt a twinge of sympathy for Eren as she navigated by keeping her hand on the wall until she saw lamplight and heard voices.

"We're not starting without them." It was Mikasa.

When Erna rounded the corner and saw everyone sitting around a couple of lanterns, on boxes and on the floor, she was immediately accosted by Mikasa asking her where Eren was.

"I'm happy to see you too." Erna answered sarcastically. She tried to channel Erwin's voice, "He had to sacrifice himself for the success of the mission and the good of humanity." Then she clarified before Mikasa could run off, "He's talking to Hange. We had to get her out of her office."

"What did you get?" Connie asked as he simultaneously slapped Sasha's hand away from reaching for a piece of bread in a pile of food that was set on a wooden crate being used as a makeshift table.

Erna opened her bag. This was the part she was nervous about. "Well… I got liquids in bottles…" She chewed her lip. "They're only labeled with numbers, but… they're probably alcohol? Maybe?" She took out three clear glass bottles filled to varying levels with liquids of different colors.

Armin gently took them from her and set them off to the side, being extremely careful with them as if they might be explosive. "We'll just save those for last. Hopefully we have enough that we won't need to open them."

"What  _do_ we have?" Erna asked.

"Not enough." Sasha answered as she tried to reach past Connie to grab some food. He told her to calm down and wait for Eren, but he couldn't hold her back. She grabbed a potato and started to devour it.

Jean rolled his eyes. "We have whiskey." He held up the bottle from Mike's desk and waved it. It was only a bit more than half full. He set it down on the table.

Mikasa added another bottle. "Erwin had a bottle of scotch." It was mostly full; exactly what they would expect from their straight laced commander. "Some cigars." She tossed those onto their crate-table. "And…" she reached inside her loose cardigan sweater and pulled out some folders, fanning them out in her hand. "I got everyone's files."

Erna was much more excited about that than about the booze. She reached for the folders, but Mikasa held them up out of her reach and grabbed her hand, telling them all very seriously, in her stern scary voice, "We're not doing anything until Eren gets here."

They had to wait about half an hour. Half an hour that was spent largely complaining and begging Mikasa to let them at least drink a warm-up shot while they waited. When Eren appeared he looked frazzled and angry, before anyone could even express their relief that he was finally there, he shouted, "What in the actual fuck, Erna?!"

Erna moved herself and stepped behind Krista, hoping that he would be distracted by the blonde girl's cuteness and forget about being angry.

"What happened?" Mikasa put her hands on his shoulders and looked him up and down for signs of injury.

"Why didn't you come save me?" He ignored Mikasa to yell at Erna who was holding Krista in front of her like a shield of adorableness.

"I thought you could handle her! I'm sorry! I didn't know how to get you out of there! She just kept talking!" Erna cowered behind Krista and hugged her knees. She closed her eyes, trying to shut out the memory of the pain of listening to Hange talk about titans.

Mikasa shook Eren to make him focus on her. "Eren, it's over! It's okay now!" She held him close until he calmed down.

He looked around at everyone and at the stash they'd amassed. "Was it at least worth it? Was there anything good in there?"

"We're not sure," Armin answered. He was carefully turning one of the mystery bottles around and examining it in the light.

Krista turned around and smoothed her hand over Erna's hair. She said soothing things and coaxed Erna to her feet again.

"Do you know what these numbers on these bottles mean?" Armin asked Eren, since he occasionally spent time with Hange in her office. Maybe she'd mentioned it.

"Nope, but I need a shot of something."

"Way ahead of you," Connie was pouring whiskey into stolen water glasses. Erna could tell he was concentrating on getting the same amount into each one. She could guess that any disparity could easily kickstart more yelling and that Connie knew this from experience. He had enough whiskey to fill four glasses and he filled the remainder with scotch.

Armin put the bottle of maybe alcohol/maybe explosive substance down as Connie passed glasses around. He took his and raised it. "Anyway, Jean has good news, so we actually have something to celebrate other than the suspension of boredom this time."

Erna snapped out of her Hange flashback to be snarky. No trauma would ever be bad enough to tone down her snarkiness when it came to Jean. "Did Erwin find the necessary funding to fix your face? What did he have to cut from the budget?"

Jean was in too good a mood for once to say something sarcastic or curse her out. "No, but he did promote me to team leader."

"I'm not drinking to that." Eren grumbled.

"That's unfortunate about your face," Erna said sympathetically.

"Did any of us get moved to your team?" Mikasa asked.

"No."

"I'll drink to not having to listen to Jean." Eren raised his glass as did everyone else, even Jean, although he did mumble something about them being a bunch of immature assholes.

As Erna downed a large gulp from her glass, she winced. She recognized it as the stuff from the bottle in Mike's desk. It burned her throat and she thought that meant it was either very good or very bad as far as whiskey went. She gave her head a shake and whined at Mikasa "Can we have the files now?" She desperately wanted to see what the others' files said. She wanted some insight, because the fact that she didn't go through the training with them made her feel left out sometimes. She wanted to feel more on their level and less like an adopted baby sister.

Instead of giving everyone their own file, Mikasa handed them out at random. Everyone quickly flipped them open and started reading. After a few seconds of tense silence, Connie laughed and snorted, "You guys, guess who I got. The first note says:  _Possesses absolutely no self-control. Hard headed and impulsive._ "

"That doesn't sound like anyone I know," Mikasa said, in a rare display of sarcasm as she turned and looked directly at Eren who frowned, not having a very good sense of humor about himself.

Jean spoke up. "Listen to what Shadis wrote about Connie:  _Skilled at making sharp turns, but his mind is nowhere near sharp._ "

"Tch." Connie took another drink. He had no comment.

Mikasa read from hers, "Sasha is  _unfit for organized activity._ "

Eren passed Mikasa's file to her and rolled his eyes, "Yours is boring. It's just a bunch of notes about what a perfect, genius prodigy you are." Mikasa's lips formed a very slight smile.

Armin passed Krista's file down, "Krista's is mostly about how beautiful she is. It's kind of creepy considering our trainers and superiors write the notes."

Sasha had Armin's file, "Yours is predictable. Weak, but smart, blah blah blah…" She took some more food. Connie took the file from her and gave it to Armin who started scanning it quickly and blushed every time he hit something complimentary about his intelligence.

Erna squinted at the file in her hands. "This can't be right. It says Jean's 3D control skills are top notch. That's an error, right?" Jean glared at her, but before he could open his mouth to say anything, Erna put the file down and looked around, eyes stopping on Krista next to her. She leaned to look over her shoulder, "That means you have mine! What's it say?"

Krista's hands snapped the file closed. She smiled sweetly, but her voice betrayed her nervousness. "Only good things! Definitely nothing about you being like a cold, unfeeling machine."

Erna gave Krista a grim look and snatched for the file, ripping it from the girl's hands after a short struggle. She flipped past the stats to the notes section. Every note was like a backhanded compliment, starting with things like  _'socially indifferent, cold, mechanical,'_ and ending with comments about what an excellent soldier she was.

She paused at one note. "' _Strange girl but effective'_? What the fuck even is that? That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard."

She scanned down to the most recent notes. The one Erwin had made was unsurprising; Mike had alluded to it before. But she didn't know Levi had made a note in her file while she was on his team. She read it aloud, " _Deep survivor's guilt and adrenaline-seeking behavior - significant symptoms of post-traumatic stress comorbid with masochistic personality disorder._ "

She slowly dropped her hands and the file into her lap and looked up at Armin, because he was the smart one. "What does any of that mean?"

Armin stammered and blushed, searching for the most polite but accurate words for his explanation. Jean nudged him. "Just tell us how fucked up she is. Like on a scale from one to serial killer."

Armin prepared himself by knocking back a little more whiskey and explained, "Well… it means that you've experienced trauma, which effects your brain and the way it responds to stress. That can result in a lower level of monoamine oxidase enzymes which regulate dopamine and low levels of that can be indicated by impulsive behavior to seek immediate rewards without regard for consequences – also known as adrenaline seeking behavior."

There was silence until Jean spoke up, "So does that mean she's like a nine on the scale of fucked up?"

Erna ignored him and stayed focused on Armin. "What about the last part?"

Armin repeated the last part of the note to stall for time. "Masochistic personality disorder?" He stammered, "I… um… I d-don't think I know…"

"Bullshit. Spit it out." Erna hissed threateningly.

Armin's face turned red. He said it quickly like doing so pained him. "It means you derive sexal gratification from physical or emotional pain or humiliation. ' _Comorbid_ ' means it's unrelated to the other things."

Armin squirmed, afraid of what her reaction would be, until she sighed in relief. "I was worried it was something bad."

Sasha finished eating and rolled her eyes at Erna. "It  _is_  bad. It's completely weird."

Erna closed the file in her lap and snapped. "Who made you the sex police? I'm so sure everything you two do is completely normal." She pointed at Sasha and Connie, her voice dripping with sarcasm.

Armin made an attempt to diffuse the argument with logic before it got anywhere. He cleared his throat and said quietly and calmly, "It actually makes a lot of sense from a biological standpoint. The brain holds unused loads of endorphins that it releases to lessen pain so that it won't go into shock immediately in crisis situations. If there's a certain level of sustained pain over a period of time it will continue to release bursts of endorphins and adrenaline, resulting in a euphoric feeling. Over time if the body continues to get flooded with endorphins, a person can lapse into a drugged-like state of lowered inhibitions, ecstasy, and docility."

Again awkward silence. Then Erna nodded and confirmed, "Yeah, it's like that." She squinted at Armin, feeling very curious about how he had that knowledge so ready at hand. He was smart, but…

"You're like a kinky encyclopedia." Her observation made Armin blush bright red and the way she was staring at him like a cat with a mouse made Jean feel the need to put an arm around him.

"Just because Armin can put big fancy words to it doesn't make it not weird." Sasha decided. "Anyway, less talking. We should play a game."

Connie got excited. "Oh, let's play truth or dare again." He was met with a resounding and near-unanimous  _No._

"What's that?" Erna inquired.

"It's a disaster." Mikasa answered.

Connie was disappointed. "It wasn't  _that_  bad."

Mikasa reminded him, "Jean almost died."

Eren bristled with defensiveness, obviously feeling blamed for Jean's near-death experience. "He shouldn't have taken the dare if he couldn't do it!"

"I could have done it if I wasn't drunk!" Jean yelled.

Krista leaned over and quietly explained to Erna, while they yelled back and forth, that Jean had tried to do an impossible 3D maneuver - a quadruple backflip, only using gas to reverse in midair and flip back, in between the roofs of two of the stables on a dare from Eren. He'd gotten hung up in the wires just before coming really close to falling into the ground at an angle that probably would have snapped his neck. Levi had to come out and cut him from the cables in the middle of the night. It hadn't gone over well to say the least.

Krista explained that every time they tried to play, everyone except for her and Armin, took dares and tried to one-up each other and it ended disastrously every time without exception. Things tended to escalate pretty quickly. Especially if alcohol was involved, which if they were bothering to play, it was always definitely involved.

Erna could imagine how bad it could get with people who were this proud and hard-headed, herself being one of them. "That doesn't sound like any fun at all."

Sasha heard her and teased, "Really? I would think you'd be into it. It involves a lot of pain and humiliation."

Connie raised his voice over Jean and Eren's arguing, "We have enough booze here to play a drinking game."

That made them stop arguing. Erna was now suspicious of this whole group and their judgement, so she had to ask before being convinced to do it, "What is a drinking game?"

"Where did you come from?" Sasha said, frustrated with Erna's naivete on such things. "It's any game where you try to punish your friends with alcohol poisoning. There are no winners. Only losers."

Erna's eyebrows lowered. She was unenthused. "What happens to the losers?"

"They usually pass out and we draw or write things on their face." Connie said matter of factly.

Erna just stared at them for a few seconds before breaking her silence. "Where do you guys get off calling me weird? I'm curious."

Connie ignored her and grabbed the bottle of scotch, leaning forward and topping everyone off as he suggested "We can play 'I've Never.'" No one objected to that, so he explained the rules to Erna. "You go around the circle, taking turns, naming things you've never done and everyone who has done that thing has to take a drink. The person who empties their glass first loses."

Erna eyed him suspiciously. "That's it?"

"Simple," Connie grinned.

Eren moaned, "I hate this."

Connie explained, "Eren always loses. He's an easy target."

Armin interrupted with something Connie forgot, "The only other rule is that if you come up with something that makes everyone but you drink, you get another turn."

Sasha dismissed that, "It never happens."

Erna considered this new information. She only had one question. "How do you decide who goes first?"

"Fight about it, usually," Jean answered honestly. "Then Mikasa picks someone."

Everyone looked to Mikasa so that she could just pick now and cut out the part where they all argue about it. "Let Erna go first. She's at a disadvantage."

Eren complained, " _I'm_ at a disadvantage!"

Armin reminded him, "You never get hangovers. That's your advantage."

That set Eren off grumbling. Erna started before it could turn into a big thing. "I've never played this."

Everyone looked at her, not doing anything, apparently unsure if she was just saying that conversationally or if this was her starting the game. She nodded and told them to drink.

She felt something new. It was a power trip. She liked it. She tilted her head and thought. Since they all came out of the same trainee division, they probably had a lot of common experiences that she didn't share. She tried to remember which number their division was and place them in time. Her eyes drifted upward, trying to think of things that would be specific to all of them.

Jean thought she was taking a little too much time. "No thinking."

Erna huffed, "You didn't say there was a time limit. Fine." She thought for one more second. "I've never seen titans inside Trost."

"Disadvantage my ass!" Eren complained as everyone but Erna was made to drink again.

Erna smiled evilly. "I like this game. I'm sorry I didn't trust you guys. You were right. This is fun."

Mikasa warned her, "Don't gloat. It gets you in trouble."

Erna thought she could probably end the game without even ending her turn. She went again. "I've never seen Eren in titan form."

But that was a miscalculation. Eren didn't drink. He'd technically never seen himself in titan form either. Erna slapped her palm to her forehead and muttered curse words to herself.

It was Krista's turn, her voice tinkled like a bell. She said she'd never met her father. She was close, but Jean was exempt from that one. Erna drank some whiskey from her glass and as it burned down her throat, she decided she didn't like this game as much as she thought.

Sasha looked at Erna with mischief in her eyes. "You need to catch up," she decided, nodding at how much whiskey she still had left compared to the rest of them. "I've never…" She seemed to think about it, but she really didn't need to because it was easy. "I've never kissed Levi."

"Oh fuck you." Erna spat before she took her drink. She hadn't thought about how dirty this game could be played.

Connie took up Sasha's lead. "I've never seen Levi's bedroom."

Erna drank again and made a face. "Is this how it's going to be?"

Connie answered, "Yeah, this is pretty much the game. Pick on the weakest link until you take them out. Usually we go for Eren with all his titan shifty stuff, but you might be an even easier target than him."

Jean was next. Erna cringed in anticipation of needing to drink again, but he went a different route, "I've never killed anyone."

Mikasa and Eren clinked glasses before drinking. Eren wiped a stray drop of whiskey from his mouth and said, "Worth it."

Erna looked at them in shock. She didn't ask for details about their homicide. She was sure she didn't want to know, even though she didn't have any strong feelings about the morality of taking human life in certain circumstances, she had a strong feeling that she didn't particularly like to think about it. "This game is fucking dark."

Armin was next and he was pragmatic about it. He said something specific to Erna because she was the most likely to lose, but he did so sweetly and apologetically, "I've never engaged in sadomasochism."

Erna drank readily, not complaining anymore. She looked him up and down and licked her lips. "I could fix that for you," she said in a seductive husk of her voice, eyes flashing with sadistic satisfaction at his sudden blush and his uncomfortable shifting in his seat.

Mikasa had the least left in her glass, so it was in her best interest to keep up the attack on Erna. "I've never had sex in Levi's office."

If it were anyone else, Erna probably would have punched them. She hesitated before taking another drink. "Lucky guess." She cringed, not at the taste anymore because at this point the taste didn't bother her, but because she could imagine the hangover she was going to have the next day and it wasn't pretty.

Eren preemptively apologized to Erna before saying, "I've never had a wet dream about Levi burning me with candle wax."

Erna groaned. "I told you that in confidence, you whore."

Jean sneered at Eren, "Are you sure you haven't? You fanboy over him pretty hard."

Eren started to stand up, but Mikasa pulled him down and held him. Erna drank and tried to think of something. She needed to prevent anyone else from having a turn. Her mind grasped at straws, clouded with too much whiskey to be very much use analytically. "Fuck… fuck… okay… let me think," she begged.

"No thinking!" Sasha repeated Jean's rule.

Erna growled in frustration. "You guys are the worst and I hate you and I wish we weren't friends."

"We're the best and you looove us and you know it," Sasha teased her.

Erna had been dead set on coming up with something that would hit everyone and get her a bonus turn, but she gave up on that. She focused on Sasha. "I've never had sex in the kitchen pantry."

Sasha stared back at her, blank face betraying nothing. After a beat of silence, Erna pointed at her and Connie and with her voice full of malice and very thinly veiled disgust, she said "I fucking _heard_  you two. The night before the recon. I was traumatized."

"Ah shit," Connie sighed. Sasha's face fell and she dropped the naïve act. They both took a drink while everyone debated whether there was a penalty for trying to bluff. Eventually they settled on a small penalty sip for getting caught bluffing. They continued playing and everyone said things specific to Erna because it was easy and she had a lower tolerance for alcohol than Eren, so it was more fun to watch her get drunk. Most things said were vague along the  _never fucked the Captain_ lines, but then some things were very specific lucky guesses like when Jean said he'd never been blindfolded or gagged by a cravat.

The profanity that came out of Erna's mouth at every other person's turn at ganging up on her got more creative and more vitriolic as she got more drunk. They'd started the game with about twelve ounces of alcohol each and she was down to just about a finger when they got to Eren again. She was just about uselessly drunk and at the point where she didn't care if she had to drink more. She would gladly drink the whole remainder of Erwin's scotch because she was no longer rational or cognizant of exactly how drunk she was. But she still hated losing. No amount of booze could change that. If anything, alcohol only intensified that personality trait. So when it came to Eren's turn, she leaned into him and clumsily grabbed at the sleeve of his sweater. She tried being cute – something she never would have done sober. Being perceived as cute was something she was afraid of normally, but as much as she despised it, she knew that it could be a helpful tool to disarm people. She pouted and begged him to please not take her out of the game without giving her a shot at saving herself as she pressed her forehead against his arm pitifully.

Eren's eyes widened in conflict. He looked at her regretfully like he didn't enjoy what he had to do, but it would be a mercy killing to make her drink that last shot and end the game. He opened his mouth, but seemed to suddenly change his mind at the last hundredth of a second and instead of whatever he had planned, he said, "I've never… taken a dare to do a 3D maneuver that I don't have the skill to pull off."

"Fuck you, I can fucking do it!" Jean yelled and stood up, pointedly refusing to take a drink for that.

"Prove it!" Eren yelled back and his arm slid from Erna's fingers as he stood up to get in Jean's face. She sighed in relief and used the time to think as Mikasa and Armin broke up the fight and convinced Eren and Jean that now was not the time to go outside and try the stunt again.

Thinking was hard. She tried, but Jean and Eren's fighting didn't buy her enough time to come up with something that the group would have in common without her. Anything she could think of would only be a guess and that wasn't good enough for her.

When Jean and Eren were finally settled, everyone looked at her. She sighed in defeat and looked upwards as she tried to pull something from her brain.

"I never helped a bunkmate get off in my training camp barracks." It was a shot in the dark and an educated guess at the same time. Same sex experimentation was all but blatantly encouraged in the Trainee Corps. It only made sense when you had hundreds of horny teenagers all in one place who lacked the self-control to practice effective contraception. Put them in barracks, make them share beds, and subtly, tacitly approve of clumsy secretive handjobs. Everyone in Erna's barracks had done it but her. She hadn't felt any curiosity or urges. She'd gotten by feeling pretty much nothing at all.

There was a collective tensing of muscles. It was an awkward topic. Jean was the first to say fuck it and take a drink in admission. Then everyone else did and Erna got excited about getting another turn and delaying her inevitable loss until she saw that Sasha didn't take a drink. Her immediate reaction was to stand up, point, and accuse her of trying to bluff again while Sasha smugly and persistently denied it.

Jean squinted at Armin and then at Eren, as he put two and two together. "Wait.. wait.. you two were bunkmates." Armin and Eren both blushed. Eren looked away. Armin started stammering.

Mikasa spoke up when Erna started trying to physically force Sasha's whiskey to her lips and down her throat. "Erna, she's not lying. Sit down."

"Like fuck she isn't!" Erna growled, still reaching for Sasha who was now holding her away with an extended leg.

"I was her bunkmate." Mikasa said as proof of evidence.

Erna made a deep groan that turned into an exasperated scream as she sat back down. Connie pointed across the circle at Mikasa, trying to understand. "Wait, but you drank."

"I helped her out once. She was taking too long and was keeping me up. She fell asleep immediately after she finished." Mikasa said it like it was nothing. She didn't even blush. She treated it like it was purely an issue of mechanics – Sasha was keeping her up with her masturbation session, so she made her come, problem solved.

Krista made a short gasp and turned to Sasha. "You didn't reciprocate?"

Erna was unsurprised. Now that Mikasa explained it, it made perfect sense. She looked past Sasha at Connie. His mouth was hanging open and he looked like he was about to start drooling. She got his attention with a wave. When he snapped out of it and looked at her, she told him, "Connie… Your nose is bleeding."

Connie didn't say anything as he wiped away the trickle of blood with his sleeve. He took another drink, even though he didn't have to. He was just drinking for the sake of it now.

Eren said, "That's fucked up, Sasha." There was a chorus of agreement. It was bad manners at the very least. Sasha hid her face in her hands in shame.

Erna tilted her head back and moaned. "Let's just get this over with. Finish me, Krista."

Krista opened her mouth, about to take her turn, but suddenly Erna's hand was covering the lower half of her face, silencing her while she brought a finger to her own lips to shush everyone.

Jean didn't follow her directive. "Stop trying to stall, Erna. You lost, accept it."

"You guys, shut up." She hissed. She listened hard for a beat. Her eyes went wide. She leaned in and stage-whispered "Armin, how do we get out of here without going back the way we came?"

Armin whispered too, just because she was. "We can't. Why?"

Because Erna was an expert when it came to hearing and identifying Levi's footfalls. She shot up, eyes darting around to search for an escape like a wild animal for a second, ready to run. Then just as suddenly she sat back down and deflated in hopelessness, muttering, "It doesn't matter. We're already dead."

No one knew what she was talking about or what prompted this strange behavior until Levi stepped into the lamplight.

"Oi, brats, what are you doing?"

Everyone stiffened, cursed to themselves. No one tried to offer excuses or explanations. It was like they'd been through this before and knew that it was pointless to try. Erna thought that was probably exactly the case since they all seemed quite overfamiliar with the situation.

Levi didn't need an answer. He bent and picked up the files that they'd dropped into a pile on the ground. "Who broke into Erwin's office?"

Mikasa raised her hand. Levi looked impressed. He took the cigars from their crate table and put them in his pocket. As he looked around, his eyes stopped on the glass bottles they'd taken from Hange's office and he pointed at them, a slight tinge of concern and apprehension laced through his voice. "Tell me you didn't drink any of that."

Connie hiccupped. "We didn't get around to it."

Armin asked, because even impending doom couldn't quell his curiosity, "What are they?"

"Hange's vine brews." Levi took one bottle and held it up to the light to see the number on the label. "Number 9 was her attempt at a titan tranquilizer. Probably would have killed you. Didn't do shit to titans, but knocked a horse out for a day, Moblit for four."

He took the bottle of amber-colored liquid. "I'm not sure what this one was supposed to do, but Mike drank some of it thinking it was a cold remedy and had audial and visual hallucinations for a week. It was the most fun he's ever been."

Armin picked up the last one and Levi held back a laugh. "That one was supposed to increase physical endurance. Instead it enhances libido and diminishes inhibitions while  _also_  increasing physical endurance. If you drank that one I'd have been interrupting an orgy."

Armin quickly and carefully set it back down as if the liquid could sweat out through the bottle and get absorbed through his skin.

Erna whined. She couldn't take the suspense. "Are you going to kill us now?"

"That depends," Levi answered thoughtfully. He looked around. "What the fuck was the exit strategy here?"

Everyone looked at Armin who looked at the floor and answered sheepishly, "I didn't have one."

Levi was surprised. "I thought you were the only one with something besides empty space between your ears, Arlert."

"Sir… I didn't think it necessary to coordinate an escape plan… No one ever comes down here…" He was speaking softly and sounding very disappointed in himself. He seemed to be running over every possible flaw in his plan and getting very into his head about it, until he hit upon something that made him stop and wonder, "Do you mind if I ask how you knew we were here?"

"I didn't. I came down to look for something specific. You brats just happen to be that unlucky." He kicked over a small, empty crate to upend it and he started putting the files and bottles into it. "No matter how safe you think you are, always have a plan to retreat," he advised Armin.

While Armin chewed his lip in self-doubt, looking just as upset as if he had made a grave life-or-death error, Erna was distracted by something else about what Levi said.

"What were you looking for?"

Levi brought the heel of his palm to his forehead. "Oh right." He looked to Eren and asked, "Eren, when you had to sleep down here they cuffed you, right?"

Eren tried to hide the discomfort and anxiety that came with the memory, answering simply and quietly, "Yeah."

"Wrists and ankles? Or just wrists?" Levi asked as he took the bottle they'd gotten from Mike's desk. Seeing that it was empty, he dropped it into the box of their loot.

"Both." Eren made a good effort at sounding like it didn't bother him. Like he wasn't at all self-conscious or ashamed about being chained up like a monster.

"There anything left in that?" Levi asked Connie, pointing to Erwin's scotch near his feet. Connie picked it up and handed it over. Levi took it and turned to Armin again, holding up the bottle. "How did you think you were going to get away with this? You can't be dumb enough to think they wouldn't notice this shit missing and you know you're the first suspects."

Erna shouted, "You guys  _knew_ we'd get caught?!"

Armin squirmed a little and shrugged. "We assessed the odds of getting caught and decided the objective to get drunk and have fun was worth the risk."

"Was it?" Levi asked. He looked at Jean. "If I go to Erwin with this for disciplinary action it could risk your promotion."

Jean put his head in his hands and let out a long, drawn out "Fuuuuck…"

Erna grumbled, "Not worth it at all. This has been the worst ever. I'm never listening to you guys again."

Sasha snapped at her, "Don't be a sore loser."

"I didn't even lose yet!" Erna held out her glass with a shot of whiskey still left in it as proof. "And I could have come back and won if you weren't too lazy and selfish to take care of Mikasa after she helped you cum!"

Levi's perpetually half-closed eyelids rose a little in slight surprise. "What… the fuck… are you playing…?"

"'I've never'… I'm losing… They're picking on me." Erna pouted.

Levi did not feel the least bit of sympathy. "Don't be so easy to pick on." He turned to the group. "Whose turn is it? Finish her off, drink up, and you can all go run laps in the rain."

"Unnhhhhh how many?" Sasha's body slumped in despair.

"However many it takes until you vomit up everything you just drank. But finish your game first. I don't believe in ending games before they're done." Everyone groaned, but it was a much lighter punishment than they could have gotten had he left it to Erwin.

Erna raised her glass to her lips, ready to knock it back. The last bit of it wouldn't make a difference to the way she felt anyway. "Okay, Krista, go ahead. Kill me."

But Krista froze, now way too nervous to play. "I.. um.. I can't think of anything."

"Oh for fucks sake." Levi hissed in annoyance. "I'll take your turn for you." He seemed to think for a moment, then he smiled at Erna. The same slight smile and look in his eyes that he got whenever he had a wicked idea. Erna wasn't worried by it. The stuff brought up during the game had already been more humiliating than she could have imagined and she doubted anything he could say would be much worse.

"Je n'ai jamais aspiré la bitte de Commandant." He said it slowly and clearly so that she would understand even in her drunk state.  **  
**

Erna held the glass still, pressed against her bottom lip. It was easy to work out the translation in her head,  _I've never sucked the Commander's cock_ , but when she got it her brain rebelled and shut down momentarily. Her mouth hung half-open and her hand stayed frozen. She waited for him to say he was just fucking with her.

He wasn't. "You can drink that," he told her after a long enough pause.

Erna took her glass away from her lips, "I… wait… no… what?" It was too much for her to process right away. But as each second ticked by it became more real.

Levi grinned at her crisis. "I wanted to tell you before you figured it out on your own. Now seemed as good a time as any."

Erna put a hand on her forehead and closed her eyes tight, tried to stop pieces of memories from clicking together. Tried to keep Erwin's face from being coupled with the feeling of having a cock filling her throat while getting fucked. It was an impossible thing to control. Now her brain pictured him connected to the muscles she'd felt and the hand on the back of her head. She shook her head in her hand and said ' _No_   _no no_ 'over and over.

Mikasa looked worried and asked Jean, because he was the only one of them who spoke some French, "What did he say?" She sounded like she was ready to kill depending on the answer. She had an instinctively violent reaction to what she perceived as the short evil man hurting her friends.

Jean's mouth had been hanging open. He'd understood, but he was still completely confused by what he'd heard and by Erna's reaction to it. Without even thinking, he started to answer, "He said –" but before he could get anything else out, the breath rushed out of him as Erna flew from her seat, grabbed his collar, lifted him and threw him a few steps back to slam against the wall. Her teeth were bared like a snarling animal. She pressed one forearm across his chest to pin him there and covered his mouth with her other hand, her chin tilted up to lock her deadly cold grey eyes on his.

"Keep your mouth shut if you want to live to see tomorrow." She was growling. She brought her hand to his neck and pushed upward against his jaw, applying enough pressure to be dangerously close to separating his skull from his neck just to let him know she wasn't fucking around. Sufficiently frightened, he kept his mouth shut without making any snide or sarcastic comments when she let go and he slid down the wall, feet on the floor again.

Levi remained unconcerned. "You shitheads better get running. And while you're out there, think of ways to be smarter about stealing. Have an exit strategy next time. How you fucking survived this long without becoming titan food is beyond unbelievable."

Erna left Jean alone and turned around, walking back to Levi and saying bitterly, "Give me that," as she snatched the scotch from his hand.

She uncapped it and quickly brought it to her lips and tipped her head back. She gulped it down until it burned too much and she felt her stomach start to unsettle. The dizziness came immediately. She let her hand fall to her side, fingers just loosely holding the neck of the bottle, and she poked him in the chest as she let loose, speaking French too quickly for Jean to understand, "Je vais jeter tout le savon quand je serai de retour à l'appartement! Connard sadique! Je vais casser le reste des bouteilles de vin et tu pouvais le nettoyer avec tes larmes!" ( _"I'm throwing out all of the soap when I get back to the apartment! Sadistic asshole! I'm going to smash the rest of those wine bottles and you can clean up the mess with your tears!_ ")

Everyone was standing now, but no one made to leave. They didn't want to miss any of this. Jean was rubbing his neck and Armin nudged him with an elbow, hoping for a translation. Jean shrugged and whispered to him, "Something about cleaning? I don't know…"

Levi smirked at her as if her anger wasn't something to be taken seriously, as if it were cute. He gently cupped her face with one hand. When she tried to turn away, he tightened his grip, holding his thumb to her chin and keeping her face tilted up to look at him. "Ne vous plaignez pas, vous l'avez aimé. N'at il pas se sentir bien? Qu'importe qui il était?" ( _"Don't complain, you loved it. Didn't it feel good? What does it matter who it was?"_ )

Erna blushed and her brows knit together in defiant anger. He brushed his thumb over her lower lip, still holding her head in place, he lowered his voice, "Et j'ai aimé vous regarder." ( _"And I loved watching you."_ )

He was teasing her, trying to humiliate her further, trying to make her get wet and blush and lose her composure. He was showing her how easy it was for him to toy with her – that he could make her melt anywhere at any time he wanted even if she was infuriated with him. He was self-assured that he could turn that anger into lust with a few words and a look, at most a brush of his fingers.

It worked. It would always work. He made her breath hitch and her legs go weak. The way he held her still and smirked at her like she wasn't a dangerous thing to be afraid of made her feel small and vulnerable and that was a rush. He was the only one who looked at her like she wasn't something deadly and worthy of caution. Anyone else would be scared of her and what she could do. The way his voice sounded dark and smoky and the way his tongue – the only soft part of him – curled around French words made it easy to forget that anyone else was there. If not for her pride she would have fallen to her knees without hesitation. Instead she said in quiet resistance,"Chien sale arrogante." ( _"Arrogant bastard."_ )

She bit his thumb hard and as he recoiled his hand and shook it out, she warned him, "Tu ferais mieux de dormir avec un œil ouvert!" ( _"You'd better sleep with one eye open."_ )

The corner of his lip twitched slightly. "Nous allons parler quand tu sera rentré. Aller courir maintenant." ( _"We'll talk when you get back. Go run now."_ )

Erna remembered the bottle in her hand and without thinking about the consequences, brought it to her lips and drank all that was left. She swayed unsteadily on her feet. Somewhere in the back of her mind she hoped that was enough for a blackout of this whole night. She let the empty bottle fall into the box near their feet and she picked up one of the lanterns on the floor, gracelessly turning and heading for the stairs. The show appearing to be over, everyone followed her as she carefully held the wall and tried to take the steps as fast as she could.

"Erna, what did he say?" someone asked.

"Fuck you!" was her answer. Near the top step, she added, "I can't believe you didn't tell me that we had no way of not being caught!"

"I thought it was fairly obvious," Armin said quietly under his breath.

"Jean, what were they saying?" Connie asked.

"I'll kill you." Erna was warning both Connie and Jean. She would kill anyone who convinced Jean to talk and then she would kill Jean.

She opened the door out of the basement and started running. When she got outside, she made it less than one full lap before she tasted the bile in her mouth and fell to her knees as her body rejected all of the abuse she had put it through. She rolled onto her back, one arm over her eyes to protect them from the rain and she breathed deeply as every cell in her body pounded in an awful thudding rhythm and made her wish she could take back everything in the past hour.

She felt the world spinning too fast. When Sasha stopped next to her and said, "Don't fall asleep. If you do we get to write on you in semi-permanent ink and you can't complain," she couldn't tell where her voice was coming from. Her center of gravity and sense of balance couldn't keep up with the shift when Sasha pulled her up. It took her a few seconds to regain the ability to stand on her own. When she was stable enough, Sasha let her go, patted her on the head the way that she hated, and started running again before Erna could hit her.

She turned to go back in. She discovered herself in the apartment – she couldn't remember the walk there or much else. She stood unsteady on her feet for a few moments, trying to remember something recent, but quickly she lost the urge to remember anything. She was barely aware of what was happening or where she was when Levi's voice snapped her out of it.

"What?"

"I said go shower and brush your teeth, your breath smells like a still in a sewer."

When she woke up the next morning, she wished that she hadn't, but she couldn't fall back to sleep. Her internal clock was set too well and was too strict. Besides she was too physically uncomfortable to sleep.

Levi was gone already, but there was a pitcher of cold water set on the table next to her side of the bed. It was either a sign that Levi felt bad and wanted to make up for last night, or it was purely his practicality and desire for her to not die from dehydration and kidney failure. She sat up and held the pitcher against her forehead instead of pouring it into the accompanying glass. The cool porcelain eased her pounding headache, but only for as long as she held it there. The throbbing returned as soon as she shakily returned the pitcher to the table. She didn't try to drink it. She felt like she wouldn't be able to keep water down anyway.

She kept one hand on the wall all the way to the dining hall where she fell into a chair, barely keeping it and herself upright. She was obviously much sicker than any of her friends. She couldn't even blame the others for the hangover. If she had stopped drinking when the game was over, she wouldn't have been experiencing half the dizziness and dehydration that she was. She wondered if she could blame Levi for the hangover, then she decided that she couldn't. All he'd done was give her the information she'd been seeking out. Just the timing could have been better.

And then there he was. But he only appeared at their table to inform them that they'd be on cleaning duty for the rest of the week; Jean wouldn't take command of his new team until headquarters was spotless. Erna didn't lift her face from the table and he didn't acknowledge her presence, which was actually comforting to her. She wanted to be treated like anyone else. That was the deal. She didn't want her life as a soldier to change. Needed the routine and the certainty of it.

* * *

 

Erna leaned on her mop handle. Her mind wandered. She didn't understand what Levi got out of cleaning. She didn't mind tedious and boring tasks, but cleaning was such a thankless chore that was never really done. Nothing would ever be clean to his high standards for more than a day or so. Dust would always settle. She rested her cheek on her hand over top of the handle and closed her eyes. She dozed off standing up.

That didn't last long. Jean woke her up with a hand on her shoulder. She startled and spun around, hands instinctively gripping the mop handle as though it were a weapon.

Jean put his hands up and his lips turned up into a smug sneer. "Easy there, killer."

Erna turned around and dropped the mop back into the bucket, the pricking in her wrists that came with panic started to subside. She leaned on it and held her forehead. "Is this how it usually goes?" Her voice was quiet, tired again, absent of the startled panic of a moment before.

"How what goes?"

"When you guys have been caught in the past… You just have to clean for a week or so?"

"Yeah, mostly…"

"Doesn't that seem like a light sentence to you? I mean, comparatively? I've gotten worse punishment for smaller things."

Jean stood and thought about that while Erna drew her mop from the bucket and started weakly pushing it around again.

"I don't think Erwin and the others can get too mad at us when we do childish shit, because we're risking our lives every day. It's probably better to suffer the occasional act of insubordination than have to deal with us losing our minds with paranoia and depression."

Erna only replied with a hum. Thinking that was probably what was happening to her. Slowly.

Jean's tone turned from contemplative to teasing. "Or we're getting off light this time because you sucked Erw—"

Erna stopped him from finishing his sentence with a quick jab below the sternum with the broom handle. He doubled over in pain, trying to catch his breath. She went back to cleaning as if nothing happened. She said matter of factly over her shoulder, loud enough for him to hear her over his wheezing, "I can't confirm or deny. I was blindfolded. But I can tell you that if you mention it again, I'll kill you slowly and torture everyone you love… probably not in that order. It would be more fun to do horrible things to Armin if I could make you watch."

She didn't let on whether or not she was exaggerating for effect. She wasn't really sure herself. Sometimes she felt like she had a monster inside her with the potential for much cruelty and she was just trying to keep it tamped down.

* * *

 

Mike came to get her towards the end of the day, making her follow him to his office after accepting everyone's half hearted apologies for the breaking and entering with a silent nod.

She was tired and cranky and suspicious of everything. She felt sure she couldn't have been dragged there for anything good, but how the hell could she know. Mike was impossible to read and always so calm. It irritated her.

"Am I in more trouble? Or did you want to kick my ass at chess again?" She lashed out at him and immediately felt like shit about it, but his calm expression didn't change. Sometimes it seemed like he was her emotional punching bag. He never reacted to her outbursts and it made her feel a little better to get the vitriol out of her system without hurting anyone.

"You're not in  _more_ trouble…"

She ran her fingers through her hair, dragged her nails over her scalp. It killed her a little to do it, but she said, "I'm sorry."

"Don't be."

If he didn't want an apology, she didn't understand why she was there. She wanted to ask, but she held her tongue because she was sure it would come out bratty or worse.

He looked at her in a subtle searching way that she was used to. The way most people used to look at her when her face was very much less expressive and they were trying to read her for emotions that she didn't have. He had to know by now that she couldn't hide emotions when she had them, so he had to be looking for something else.

After some silence, he asked, "Did you want to get caught?"

His voice was free of inflection. He wasn't being sarcastic or attempting to mock her, which just annoyed her further because it was a stupid question.

"Of course not." She crossed her arms, unable to hide her impatience. She hated when she was being questioned without knowing the point of the questions.

"Do you think it was a good plan?"

"I didn't think about it." She started tapping her foot. She couldn't hold still.

"If you didn't want to get caught, why didn't you think about your plan of action?"

Her nails dug into her upper arms. "I just figured it was taken care of. I assumed it must be a good idea."

Mike leaned back a bit in the chair behind his desk. He tilted his head back and looked up at the ceiling. He didn't seem like he was relaxed, just composed and contemplative. He asked, "Because it was someone else's idea?"

Erna mumbled, "I guess."

"Did you have a better idea?"

Erna pressed her lips tight together. She wouldn't answer that. There weren't many things she was uncomfortable talking about, but that question made her viscerally uncomfortable. She wanted to sink into the floor. She would settle for stubbornly remaining silent until he dismissed her.

When he realized she wasn't answering, he turned his gaze from the ceiling back to her. She felt challenged by the eye contact and looked down at the floor.

"I'll rephrase. Did you have an idea?"

Her nails dug further into her skin and she couldn't stop her foot nervously tapping against the leg of the chair. She wondered how long he would patiently wait for her to break her tense silence before letting her go. Probably longer than she could stand to keep it up. She took a few deep breaths and then said quietly, "Break into the offices, steal less than half from whatever bottles we find, water down the rest, then drink and do whatever in an empty stall at the end of the second stable. The stables have one person on watch overnight, so you can bribe them to look the other way or even act as a lookout and being at the end of the building, near the door, makes it easy to leave quickly and scatter."

Her face burned. She was ashamed to say it out loud. She was afraid it was wrong, that there were obvious things she didn't think of. She knew there had to be.

"Why didn't you suggest that?" Mike's voice was still free of any inflection. He betrayed no judgment or opinions if he had any.

"I thought it was a bad idea…"

"What makes it a bad idea?"

Erna twisted the toe of her boot into the floor and kept her eyes pointed down, focused on it. "I don't know."

Mike sighed. The first sign of any emotion at all from him. She kept her chin tilted down, but looked at him from under her eyelashes. He was leaned back in his chair, hands folded behind his head. Looking at the ceiling again. He looked like he was thinking. And like he was troubled. Like she was a difficult problem to be solved.

"Can you think of anything that would make that a bad idea?"

Erna's nose and eyes started to feel itchy. She hated this. She felt like he was dissecting her flaws and pinning them onto a tray to show to her just how fucked she was. She felt powerless and frustrated. She wanted to leave.

"I don't know… I can't think of anything…" Her voice was small and quiet and pitiable.

"There isn't anything to think of. It's not a bad idea."

"I just assumed that if it was a good idea then someone else would have thought of it."

"So it was a bad idea because you thought of it…" He said it like he almost thought it was funny.

"Don't fucking patronize me." Her voice still sounded small and weak.

"It's funny because you're so certain that you don't have good ideas, but you don't have any evidence to back that certainty up."

She rubbed her eyes. The itchiness behind them wouldn't go away. Her heart beat faster.

"So what's the point?" She wanted to get this over with. Whatever she was supposed to be learning or volunteering, she wanted to get it done or at least tell him whatever he wanted to hear so that she could leave.

"Just trying to understand." He tipped his chair back and put his feet up on the desk. Erna's jaw clenched and her breath came a little harder. She kept her eyes fixed on the floor because looking around or looking at him made her feel more trapped and more frantic. Looking at the walls and the objects around the room made her think of escape and made her frustrated that she wouldn't let herself just walk out of there until he gave her permission to leave. She heard a new sound and realized it was her teeth grinding against each other. She wanted to bite down on her hand to keep them still and to have something else to think about – some pain to concentrate on – but she didn't want to make her discomfort so obvious. Her arms uncrossed and her hands reached down and curled around the seat of the wooden chair on each side of her, fingers hooking under it and digging into the wood.

"You look like you're about to cry or hit something." His voice was free of sympathy. He said it as if he was only stating a fact. He waited for her to respond, but she didn't. She felt she had nothing to say about that. If she wanted to cry or hit something or keep all of her anxiety wrapped up tightly inside until it destroyed her then that was her business and she didn't feel obligated to acknowledge it to anyone. Her nails dug and scratched into the chair. It felt good to tear the wood grain bit by bit, like picking away at dead skin.

"You didn't show nearly this level of conflict when you made the decision to train by yourself outside the walls." It was the first time he'd mentioned it outright since they'd first talked about it. He gave her a moment to clench and unclench her jaw. He seemed to be pausing between sentences so that the silence in between would force her to think about what he was saying even with how much she wanted to shut everything out and retreat inside herself.

"Is it because that plan is perfect?"

"No." That she could answer easily. Nothing she came up with was ever perfect by any stretch of the word.

"But you're not anxious about it." He was leading her somewhere. She could tell. She hated it and she wanted to stand up and throw her chair through the window behind him before she would let herself be led around her own fucking head.

She took a deep breath in and it shuddered a little when it came out. Her nails dug deeper into the chair, pain blossomed underneath them. "It's different. That decision only affects me. It's okay if it's flawed."

There was silence. She waited, but he didn't say anything. When the silence got to be too much, she finally looked up and away from the floor. He wasn't leaning back in his chair anymore, his feet were on the floor again and he'd been watching her. He finally spoke when she made eye contact, as if that was what he was waiting for.

"I see."

"Tch." No two words could have been more infuriating to her. They twisted inside her and made her feel like an insignificant speck of a human being. Like she was some kind of experimental specimen and he'd just cut her open and found something interesting. She sniffed hard, flaring her nostrils. The itchiness was overwhelming.

"You can go."

The bindings inside her that had been keeping her together broke apart. They snapped like steel cables, causing collateral damage as they whipped around. All her control disappeared. She stood up, nails still dug into the underside of the chair dragged out and set it in motion to topple over. She kicked it before it ever touched the ground and sent it flying into the wall as she yelled, "You don't get to do that!"

His face didn't change in the slightest even as she slammed her fists onto his desktop. She screamed without thinking about or knowing what she was saying. Adrenaline took over and her actions weren't kept in check anymore.

"You don't get to drag me around the edges of the darkest parts of my head, make me pick up all the filth, and just leave me there confused and dirty without knowing what the point of any of this is or what the fuck you think you've just learned!"

"Pick up that chair and sit down."

She blinked. She looked behind her where the chair should have been. It was gone and she didn't remember how it got across the room. She was suddenly aware of the painful tightness in her hands. She looked down at her white-knuckled fists on the desk and brought them up slowly, uncurling her fingers, stretching them out and looking at her hands as if it were the first time she was seeing them.

"I won't talk to you until you calm down."

It took her a second to get collected again. She felt like she'd just left her body and was coming back into it. She remembered the chair and crossed the room to pick it up and set it back where it should be. She sat in it contritely and looked at the floor again.

"Look at me."

Her eyes ticked upwards, but she avoided direct eye contact. She cheated by focusing on his nose. After she held herself still and quiet for a moment, he spoke again.

"What I learned is that your unwillingness to take responsibility is disturbing to say the least. You have an incredibly narcissistic certainty that you can't have good ideas or help anyone even though any reasonable person couldn't pick out a flaw in the plan you just told me. Against all logic, you think that inherently, just because an idea came out of your head, it's not worth anything."

Erna's vision went cloudy. She hadn't blinked in a while. She kept her eyes pointed at Mike's face, but he was blurry now. Her eyes went in and out of focus.

"And the fact that you're only okay with making decisions for yourself, not for others, when you're so certain that your ideas are bad, means that you're at best apathetic about what happens to you, but I don't think it's apathy. I think you wouldn't mind destroying yourself. And you obviously don't mind holding yourself back from offering a suggestion or alternative plan that could save people. You'll die following someone else's misguided ideas before you'll risk being responsible for anyone else."

Erna regretted asking for this. Wanted to tell him to stop, but couldn't bring herself to admit that she couldn't take the truth. Even while he told her exactly what her weaknesses were, she couldn't let herself show her vulnerability openly and honestly.

"And I get to do this because you gave up the right to decide what you would and wouldn't be comfortable with when you joined the military. With most people we have to break them down until they get comfortable with following orders. That's the point of the Trainee Corps. With you we'd have to break you down until you're comfortable with giving orders."

He sighed, folded his hands behind his head and looked up towards the ceiling again. "I don't think I know how to do that. When I told you to leave it was so that I could sit here and think about it. But then you had to have a fit."

She couldn't keep looking at him. She'd never felt so thoroughly ashamed and impossibly broken. Worthless and toxic. Her mind started to shut down, refused to think about what he was saying anymore. She pushed it all into the back of her head, locked it away, and let her mind go blank. The itchiness behind her eyes and nose started to fade away.

"Do you feel like you're here right now?"

"More or less." She answered in the cold monotone that used to be her baseline. Her classic coping mechanism of not feeling anything kicked in and denied her any chance for dealing with reality or emotional catharsis.

"Which is it? More or less?"

"Less." She felt far away. Not completely there.

"Do you remember kicking the chair?"

She looked around, confused. "No."

"You black out sometimes."

"Oh…"

"Do you think you could hurt anyone?"

She looked up again. Searched his face. Tried to see what he thought and whether he thought she could hurt anyone, because she didn't know herself. She couldn't tell from looking at him. Anything written on his face was only subtle. He looked slightly troubled, disappointed underneath the stoic mask.

"I suppose anything is possible…" she answered.

He watched her closely for a while. She was still and quiet, not tensed up like when they began. She wasn't quite there anymore. She felt like she'd sunk deep underwater.

After a minute he said, "Grab the chess board. I have time to kick your ass a few games."

She sighed heavily. "That's why I don't ask you to play anymore. I hate losing." She got up to get the chess board from its place on the bookshelf and put it on the desk, then pulled her chair in closer.

"I know, but I can't let you leave like this. You need to decompress." He finished setting up the pieces. "And I'm not going to let you win."

She examined the black pieces on her side of the board as he made the first move. Her voice went quiet again, worried. "Am I a monster?"

"No…" He put his elbows on the desk. His pointer fingers made a steeple against his chin as he thought. About what, she couldn't tell.

She moved a pawn. "You would have noticed…"

He raised his eyebrows. She'd interrupted whatever train of thought he'd been on. "Noticed what?"

"The watered down whiskey. You would have noticed. That was the only flaw I thought of."

* * *

 

When Mike finally deemed Erna mentally stable enough to be released, it was late. She ate something standing in the empty kitchen and headed back to the apartment in a daze. Exhausted and fuzzy, but not emotionally shut down the way she had been through the first three or four games of chess.

When she got back to the apartment, Levi and Hange were set up in the living room, working at the coffee table. Papers were scattered around, but they seemed to have a system of organization that worked well enough, otherwise Levi would have stopped everything to straighten things. Hange acknowledged her with a smile and a nod. Levi didn't at all.

"What are you working on so late?"

"Plans of bribery, espionage, insubordination, and top secret research." Hange smiled at her in such a way where Erna wasn't sure if all of that was true, but she felt safe assuming that it was. As she took off her boots, Hange assured her, "Nothing you need to worry about."

Erna nodded. Sure it was nothing she wanted to be involved in either way, she was content to not ask questions. Levi kept his eyes on a stack of papers, but as she walked by the couch, he reached out and brushed her passing fingertips with his and told her, "Don't fall asleep. I need to talk to you."

Normally she would have been happy to follow anything that even sounded like an order, but that one was impossible. "I can't promise anything. I'm going to take a shower and the second I hit that bed, I'm probably going to be out. Maybe even before that." She felt like she could fall asleep mid-sentence just standing there.

"Then don't go to bed. Come back out here when you're done."

Erna looked over his shoulder, scanned the papers he was looking at, then over the others spread over the coffee table until she found the word she was looking for. She leaned over the couch and put her finger on it and asked, "What's that word in French?"

Levi turned to see what she was pointing at. "It's the same. Titan."

She straightened back up and looked down at him. He went right back to concentrating on whatever he was reading.

"Quand est la dame titan folle laissant?" ( _When is the crazy titan lady leaving?_ )

"Elle aura disparu au moment où tu avais terminé." ( _She'll be gone by the time you're finished.)_

"When you speak French, I can only assume you're talking about me." Hange interrupted them in a sing-songy tone.

Erna walked away as Levi told Hange, "Get this pile of shit cleaned up and out of here in less than fifteen minutes. If I have to read one more word, I'm going to have an aneurysm."

As promised, Hange was gone when Erna came back out, which was lucky because she didn't have the energy or inclination to put clothes on again after showering and was only wrapped in a big, fluffy towel. Levi was sprawled out on the couch, an arm hooked over the back. His eyes were closed and he rubbed his fingertips over his temples like he had a headache. She walked around to the couch and was about to sit on the floor, but Levi reached out, took her hand and turned her around. He pulled her down onto the couch to lay between his legs, facing away. He wrapped her in his arms and rested his chin on her head.

Conventional displays of affection felt strange and would normally make her uncomfortable, but just then she felt okay with it. More than okay, she felt comforted and warm and it felt right. But okay was about the most that she would admit to feeling. She put her hands on his arms and pulled them to hold her tighter.

He whispered into her hair, "Je suis navré."

She didn't know that one. She started to open her mouth to ask, but before the words came out, he said, "I shouldn't have told you about Erwin when you were in such a bad place. It was a shitty, impulsive thing to do."

She didn't say anything. She didn't know what she could say to that. She couldn't tell him that he was wrong, that it was okay. He was right, it was a shitty, impulsive thing to do. But she had reacted to it impulsively too. It was a mess.

She pushed back, molded herself into him. She thought of something she could say with reasonable accuracy, "I'm okay now."

She could feel him smile against her hair. He pressed his cheek against the side of her head.

"Sometimes I forget how fragile you are."

He was teasing her, but it was skirting around the edges of truth. "I am  _not_." She acted highly offended and lightly pressed her teeth into his arm wrapped tight around her shoulders. They were both quiet for a while, then she asked, "What's 'navré'?"

"Tch. I didn't intend for you to catch that."

"Well I did. I pay very close attention. What is it?"

He pulled her closer into his chest and let out a deep breath. "It means I'm terribly sorry…"

Her heart sunk. She didn't want him to be sorry. She wanted to tell him he didn't have to be perfect, she didn't want or need him to be. That not everything had to be clean and organized and that it was okay if sometimes they were a mess together because it made them both more human. Her breath stopped as the center of her chest felt tight like it was twisting around into a ball of knots. She consciously took a deep breath and tried to get her heart to slow down and not feel so much. Her hand found his over her shoulder and she pulled his fingertips to her lips and grazed them with her teeth, because that was stronger and harder than kissing. He squeezed his thighs, trapped her between his legs. She chastised him through smiling lips, "Cheater. Trying to get away with saying it in a way I wouldn't understand."

She wiggled up and back until she was more level with him. She dropped her head, neck curled over his shoulder so she could trace soft kisses over his jawline. He tilted his head back, gave her better access to his neck and throat, which she gladly took advantage of. She could feel his vocal chords vibrate under her lips as he hummed. She bit at his throat, made slight indentations in his neck marking where her teeth had been. She smiled against his skin because he genuinely seemed to not know that she was only doing all of this to tease him. When he started to move his hands and tighten his legs around her, she tilted back a little to whisper in his ear. "Hey Levi?"

"Hm?" His eyes were closed and he was lax. Melted. Perfect.

She inhaled, and then whined as loudly and shrilly as possible in his ear, "Why Erwin thooough? That's so fucked up!" His head tilted swiftly away from her, tried to escape the assault on his eardrums.

He put his hands firmly on her shoulders and pushed her back down, wrapped an arm around her and put a hand over her mouth so that she couldn't whine for now. He rested his chin on her head again.

"Another impulse," he explained. "Not a shitty one though. Perfectly sound reasoning: He's easily got to be the most horny, pent up sexually frustrated prick in the Survey Corps. I'm surprised he didn't pump you so full of built up cum that it came out your nose."

Erna's face scrunched up in revulsion. Her cry of "You're disgusting!" was muffled by his hand over her mouth.

"More importantly, he wouldn't get attached. I let Eren lick you for five minutes and for a week you could practically see his heart beating out of his chest every time you were even in the same room." He removed his hand from her mouth, but was ready to replace it if she whined again.

She highly doubted that. "If so, I'm sure that had more to do with his fear of you than anything else."

Assured that she wasn't going to pierce his eardrums again, he moved his hand from hovering over her mouth to caress her cheek. He murmured against the back of her head, "Because you think I'm the only one who can see that you're beautiful." He sighed. "I'm not going to disabuse you of that notion. It benefits me."

She didn't think she was beautiful inside or out. She didn't understand what he thought he saw. "I think you have unusual taste."

He mussed her hair, teased her, "And they think you're so smart."

She batted his hand away. "I  _am_ smart," she informed him, feigning haughtiness. "I finally beat Mike at chess. I'm one for thirty-five now."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes I take little headcanons from snk-headcanons and textsfromtitanfood on tumblr. Nothing major. But I thought I should give credit where it is due and offer some awesome blog recs.


	22. Doll Variation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Long-ass chapter in which I channel a little Edith Wharton, like if Edith Wharton wrote shitty fanfiction and smut. Characters get dressed up, addictions form, and Erna ships Eruri. Also daddy kink like whoa, voyeurism, Erna getting a little domme-y, and just general embarrassment, because the best sex is usually a bit embarrassing.

Levi woke to the familiar, but still shocking sound of screaming.

Everything in him snapped to attention, eyes opened, muscles tensed. His hand instinctively went for the handle of the knife under his pillow, but there wasn't anything there to grab except the smooth sheet. The knife under the pillow was a habit he'd given up a long time ago. He was out of bed and ready to attack or defend before he even registered that the screaming was coming from Erna. He turned around to see her face contorted in grief and horror, screaming but still asleep, tangled up in the sheet she had thrashed tight around herself.

Just as quickly, he got back onto the bed, knelt beside her and shook her firmly by her shoulders, told her to wake up. She opened her eyes, but didn't stop seeing whatever was in her head. The screaming continued until he pulled her up by her shoulders to sit up straight and look right at him. Her mouth closed, lips trembled only barely, it stopped as suddenly as it had started and the room was silent save for her heavy breathing. Grey eyes wet with tears flickered slowly from confusion to awareness. Her lips parted slightly as she panted, slowing down until she could breathe normally.

She looked at him guiltily. "Was I screaming?"

He pulled her close and held her head against his chest. He couldn't take that look. She allowed him to hold her still and silent for a minute before she started squirming, trying to untwist herself and get loose from the sheet that was wrapped too tightly around her. He let go of her to help peel it off, but she shrugged him off. He understood. He'd experienced enough wounded pride in his life to recognize that look.

He lay down on his back again while she kicked the sheet away. He wanted to hold her, to comfort her, like a normal person would. But they weren't normal people. She thought that affection meant pity and would lash out against feeling small. She hated when he was gentle with her because she thought it meant she wasn't strong and more than anything, she needed to prove that she was and he needed to respect that. Except now when she moved to lay on her side, facing away from him and curling up to face her demons alone and shut him out completely. That wouldn't stand. His hand found her shoulder and turned her over, grabbed her opposite wrist and pulled her to sprawl over him.

She turned stiff as a corpse. "You don't have to. I'm fine now."

"I don't care."

He placed an arm around her and reached down to the small of her back, pressing her body into his hard enough that she wouldn't be able to pretend that she was separate and alone. She didn't have to like it. As long as she didn't withdraw and was still there, present with him, instead of lost inside herself. He put a hand on her head and held her down, ear against his chest so she could listen to his heartbeat and breathing instead of the screaming he was sure was going on in her head. She didn't bother to put up any resistance, but she remained too proud to act like she needed the comfort. She tolerated it, but wouldn't gladly accept it and nuzzle into him the way she usually did. He only held her tight, wouldn't do anything more until she stopped feeling so stiff and tense against him.

Tension left her body slowly, in small increments, like an engine ticking down. After a few minutes she said, "I'm sorry I woke you up."

He asked her bluntly, "What was making you scream?"

Whatever tension she had been able to slowly let go of came right back. He could feel her jaw clench against his chest. She answered vaguely, trying to sound casual and calm, "Nightmare, I guess."

He didn't change the tightness of his arms around her, held her steady. He would never push anyone to talk about something they couldn't, but the way she always carried herself didn't suggest to him that there was anything she wasn't strong enough to remember and relive, so he would push. He found people in general were easy to read, but she was the easiest. She obviously held it all in because she felt talking about it would make her a burden and to her that was the worst thing a person could be. It was written all over her face every time she looked at someone she felt couldn't hold their own and in the way she avoided things that symbolically meant dependence on others. She constantly and unconvincingly tried to show that she didn't need anyone. To most people it would look like pride. To Levi it looked like the functioning technique of someone who cared about other people too much and herself not enough. The distance and disdainful looks were to hide the hurt at the thought of not being able to save everyone. He knew that too well.

"I want you to talk about it if you can." Half an order and half a challenge. Nothing affectionate, nothing gentle. She wasn't difficult to handle. Just different.

She sighed heavily and struggled with it. He'd intentionally put her in a tough spot where not talking would seem like an admission of weakness.

"Bad memory." Quietly, she was testing her voice, making sure she could get it out without stuttering or cracking before continuing. "My family. Lots of blood and screaming. It's over now. I'm fine."

That was something at least. And he wasn't surprised. But he didn't like her attempt to tie it up neatly by claiming to be fine, rejecting comfort before it could even be offered. Still stubbornly claiming the pain as all her own.

"You don't have to prove anything. It's normal to not be fine."

She made a slight humming sound. Vibrated against him with renewed tension. He ran his fingers through her hair, kept smoothing his hand over her thick bob of corkscrew curls slightly damp with sweat, for a moment making her go stiff, but he ignored her reaction. He kept patting her and eventually she relaxed just enough to sink into him.

Most people in the Survey Corps with night terrors (and there were more than a few) were terrorized by nightmares of titans. What Erna was experiencing made more sense to Levi. The calculated cruelty of humanity was more terrifying than any mindless predator.

"You know… talking about it doesn't make you weak."

She hummed again, peaceful and sleepy this time. "Don't want to trouble you."

He wouldn't be able to convince her with a few words that he wanted to be troubled. Silently he made it his mission to make her feel everything fully instead of these muted half-measures of emotions.

"Do you have any good memories of them?"

"I don't really remember anything. Just bad dreams sometimes and then I forget again."

"Try to."

There was silence for a good minute. When she spoke it was quiet and far away.

"I don't know. I think I remember we had a horse. My sisters and I would braid flowers into its mane." She made a small sighing, yawn. Levi let her fall back to sleep with that in her head instead of blood and screaming.

* * *

 

Erna woke up early. Sleep was difficult and broken up by the confusing imagery of dark dreams. She got dressed, fastened her maneuver gear belts in the dark, and started cleaning in the living room. Any little thing that she could find that wasn't already clean to perfection she subjected to her undivided attention and her need to keep busy. There wasn't a lot one could do so early in the morning without causing a disturbance and waking others up. Maybe she thought of cleaning as a good way to kill time because she spent too much time with Levi. It was a good way to concentrate on anything but the thoughts and anxieties that kept trying to push their way to the front of her mind. She heard Levi walk up behind her, turned around to see him freshly showered and mostly dressed, minus the jacket and cravat. Seeing that he was getting ready for work gave her an idea of the time. There were no windows in the living room, so she was unaware of how light the sky was getting. Seeing him made her cringe inside herself in anticipation of questions and pity. She didn't want to talk about why she was up so early or how she was feeling or anything that she was sure he would ask.

But she was wrong. Instead he said, "Developing a boot kink, are we?"

She looked down at the boot she'd polished and had been buffing for a good ten minutes. She'd done hers first and was wearing them. She'd already finished his left boot and was working on the right one, lost in the simple repetitive action of it. She turned it over in her hands and considered his question. She supposed she did like when he pressed her down with them. There was something about it. She could imagine straddling his outstretched leg and rubbing herself against his boot, maybe licking it again.

"Mm… Maybe… Yeah."

He picked up the boot she'd finished and inspected it, looked at it approvingly. "Nice." He held out his hand to take the other one.

"I'm not done."

"Yes you are." He curled his fingers and she gave up the boot reluctantly. She caught her reflection in it as he took it from her. Her skin was paler than usual, accentuating slight dark circles under her eyes.

"I want you to rest," he told her as he pulled the boots on. There was a simple, matter of fact tone to the statement as if there wouldn't be any question or argument about it. She stood up so he wouldn't be looking down at her on the floor as she told him no.

"No?" He raised an eyebrow. More intrigued than displeased. This kind of quiet, measured defiance was a new thing for her.

If it were a normal day she might have considered it. But she was still supposed to be on cleaning duty with the others as punishment for indiscretions involving theft and partial defacement of property; Mikasa, it turned out, had not been very delicate about breaking the lock on Erwin's office door, so vandalism had been added to their childish crimes. She would feel wrong about skipping out and letting the others serve their sentence without her. But she could only frame that sentiment the way she always did when he wanted her to take some off time, "I don't want to be treated differently."

"I'd be treating you differently if I let you work. If anyone looked as much like shit as you do, I'd make them take a break too." The insult came from a place of concern, but there was no betrayal of concern in his voice or facial expression and that made it easier for Erna to take. She didn't want his concern. To her there was no difference between concern and pity.

"Still…" she muttered. She couldn't come up with a logical reason to not take a break because it was obvious that she was dead tired. It was all feelings and she found it mentally exhausting to express herself in a 'feelings' way.

He held her eyes for a moment. He seemed to be thinking before saying, "Have it your way. But come back here when you're done. Take a fucking nap."

She smiled and threw her arms around his neck, kissed his cheek and jaw as she thanked him. Being exhausted seemed to make her a little more effusive. He tilted his head back when she moved to bite at his neck and she could feel a groan hum through his throat under her lips. She slid her hands up and over the short hair covering the back of his neck and pulled his head down to capture his mouth in a rare kiss. She moaned as his hands wandered down her back to grab her ass. He started to lift her like he was going to wrap her legs around him and carry her somewhere or just press her against a wall, but he seemed to suddenly think better of it, steeling himself and instead bringing his hands to her shoulders to push her a step back. He took two deep breaths through his nose and growled in quiet frustration.

He held her away and looked her in the eyes, serious and commanding. "I mean it. You need to get some sleep." When she nodded, he smirked and added, "You look absolutely unfuckable like this."

She was not convinced. "I do not." She looked down at the bulge she had felt in his pants a second ago. "If that's any indication at all."

Levi rolled his eyes at her or at his cock, they were both probably equally annoying to him. "I'm not going to stick my dick in a zombie."

"Maybe a good fuck would wake me up," she whined playfully. The temptation to tease was irresistible even when she was really too tired to accept the consequences. She'd taken more and more to covering up displays of real feelings with mischief instead. Sarcasm and teasing were her newly acquired methods of hiding anything going on under the surface. She could tell that it made her seem more 'okay' to others, more normal, less troubled.

His face changed. He looked her up and down for just a second before stepping forward and pinching her chin between his thumb and forefinger. He turned her head a little to the side, as if he wanted her face out of the way of his eyes journey down her body. She tried to turn and look at him, but he held her in a vice grip and whispered just above her ear, "I should take you back to bed and make you come over and over until you're exhausted and can't do anything  _but_  sleep."

Erna couldn't help but seriously consider it. Fuck what was right. Let everyone else clean all day while she melted in a comfortable bed in post-orgasmic bliss and contented sleep. Her lips parted a little and her pupils dilated as a moan escaped her slack jaw and she thought about all the different ways Levi could make her lately troubled mind go blank. When his fingers left her chin, she flung her arms over his shoulders and eagerly licked and sucked at his neck, a sign of acquiescence. A silent confirmation that yes, she would be completely okay with that plan. She could feel the silent laugh in his chest as he reached a hand down to glide over her back and cup and squeeze her ass before his fingertips brushed over the fabric covering her already swollen, wet lips with just enough pressure to make her whine high and keen and try to follow his hand with her hips as it withdrew and he put it back on her waist. She grabbed fistfuls of the front of his shirt in frustration and butted her forehead against his chest. She was panting. She needed more.

He easily left her grip and sidestepped her. "Get out of here. Go clean." He swatted her ass hard as he walked past her to finish getting ready.

She growled in response. She had no ability to put words together coherently through the haze of throbbing want. As if he could read her mind, he added over his shoulder before stepping out of the room, "Don't try to tease me and you won't get teased."

She shook the haze out of her head, "Smug fucker," she called after him. Loudly enough so he could hear her, "I think the only reason you can restrain yourself enough to tease me is because the thought of me cleaning really turns you on more than the thought of actually fucking."

"You're right. I'm going to jerk off thinking about you scrubbing the floors."

His response was dripping with sarcasm, but she smiled at the image anyway.

* * *

 

Cleaning wasn't half as difficult as training and was maybe only a shade more tedious. Objectively, Erna couldn't find a reason to dislike it so much when the only alternative way they would normally be spending this time was by physically and mentally exhausting themselves in training with the ultimate result of only decreasing their likelihood of dying in the field by a pretty marginal amount depending on the situation. But she did dislike it. She put muscle and delicacy into rubbing the spots away from a stained glass window, hard enough to get it clean and hovering around the threshold of the amount of pressure it would take to break right through the glass. Instead of feeling satisfaction at the accomplishment of turning something dirty spotless she only felt an uncomfortable twinge in her nerves at the nagging thought that anything she cleaned would only be clean for a little while. More and more, every day, cleaning was becoming a way to frame the existential crisis that was creeping up on her. She couldn't stop thinking that the advances made by her and her scrub brush against the dirt would be inexorably erased, making the whole gesture seem futile and pointless. That feeling steadily extended to everything. It was becoming the rule. A little more every day she felt powerless with the inability to affect lasting change on anything, filled with certainty that in the long run nothing she did would leave a lasting mark or make a difference. She could kill titans all day and it would still be more likely than not that everyone she loved would die by them. She would die too. And then others would keep killing titans and still there would probably be no appreciable progress.

"You look more miserable than usual."

Jean interrupted her train of thought, which was fine with her. It was only going around a circular track anyway and she'd reached the end/start point several times already since they'd started work that morning. She didn't respond right away because she was trying to decide whether to simply say that she was just tired or to say something sarcastic and insulting, preferably something about one of the many invariable ways that Jean resembled a member of the equine species. While she hesitated, Mike turned the corner of the hallway they were working in. He came to collect her around the same time every day now and pick her brain. Saved her the trouble of responding to Jean.

Erna started to wring out her rag and set it down. She thought she heard Jean mutter something bitter about her getting out of cleaning early every day. It was soft enough that she couldn't be sure that it wasn't only in her head, but just in case, she balled up her rag and threw it, hitting him square between the shoulder blades while his back was turned before turning to go with Mike. She didn't take more than a few steps away before a scrub brush connected with the back of her head at some velocity. Before she could even fully turn around and make a move to charge Jean, Mike took her arm and had to drag her, around the corner, and a full fifty feet before she wrenched her arm from his grasp and consented to follow without further retaliation.

Her bones felt tight before they even reached the office. This was her least favorite part of her new daily routine. She'd silently taken to calling it 'brain scraping,' but mostly it was Mike asking her questions or presenting her with hypotheticals and her sitting there in taut, defiant silence until he pushed hard enough to either rip a few monosyllabic words out of her or make her feel too trapped to do anything but hyperventilate and black out and scream or throw things that she wouldn't remember.

She went right to her chair and set about digging her nails into her palms and looking at the floor while he closed the door and went around to the desk, asking her "Going to talk today?"

She hooked her ankles around the chair legs and applied pressure until the tension matched the way she felt inside. "I don't have anything to talk about."

Mike responded, "Good then. I can tell Erwin to promote you tomorrow and he'll assign you a team to lead."

He was being very sarcastic and not hiding at all the fact that he was completely done with her obstinate shit, and Erna felt completely done with everything, which finally made her get verbal and raise her voice for the first time in weeks. "Or I can just keep doing the job I already have which I'm very good at and leave it at that. You're wasting a lot of time trying to fix something that isn't broken." She spat those last words at him like this was a deep character flaw of his, wanting to make him feel there was something wrong with him. Revenge for bringing to the surface the very deeply held feeling she'd always had, and tried as hard as she could to deny, that there was something wrong with her.

And he took it all so calmly, which made her hate him more. He didn't raise his voice with hers. If anything he spoke more quietly and asked, "Do you know how many people we get to promote to squad leaders?" He paused a couple of seconds as if he were trying to think of the answer himself. "How many even survive long enough to acquire the qualifications required for promotion?"

She didn't hazard a guess and he continued, "So run from the responsibility if you want to, but don't harbor this delusion your avoidance is useful."

And that easily all of her self-loathing coiled in her gut and made her feel physically ill. She tried to deny the truth of it, and said quietly, "I've eliminated more titans alone than any squad has together." It wasn't something she had ever brought up to anyone. It sounded obnoxious to her, hearing herself say it out loud. But she had seen it in her file and kept that bit of information in her head for whenever she had that nagging feeling that she was in fact pretty useless to anyone.

"And imagine if you could teach and direct others to do the same," Mike said with finality. He was done. These were facts. She could do what she wanted with them, but he was clearly either done trying to figure her out or had deemed her incapable of changing. In any case, they were done talking and Erna didn't feel relieved the way she imagined she would when Mike finally finished trying to pick at her brain. Instead she felt dejected and hopeless. Her face burned and when she realized that she couldn't will away the hot tears pooling at the corners of her eyes, she doubled over, folded in her chair and gasping for air in between body wracking sobs. There was no build up to it. No sniffling or whimpering. Just an abrupt and unstoppable emotional breakdown. And the real pity of it was that she didn't get to see the look of shock on Mike's face.

He was paralyzed behind his desk for some time before finally standing up even though for all his intelligence he didn't have a clue about what to do in this situation. Mental and emotional breakdowns weren't uncommon in the Survey Corps and there were procedures for dealing with them, but he knew that the last thing that would work would be trying to comfort her like a normal person. He tried to think of one single thing he could do that would not make this worse. Nothing was coming to mind. He tried snapping his fingers in front of her face, once. Twice. There was no break in her sobbing, not even any sign that she was aware of him kneeling in front of her. She was completely gone. He would kick himself later for wrongly gauging what she could handle. For now he hurried to the door to get someone who could fix this. Equal parts serendipitous and tragic, the person he would have sought out pushed the door open at exactly the same moment Mike pulled at the door knob. Steel blue eyes cut right through him and Mike stepped aside before Levi could rightfully push him out of the way.

He didn't yell. Mike wouldn't have even blamed him if he did. But he did mutter, confused, "The fuck?" as he knelt in front of Erna, held her face in his hands, wiping tears from her cheeks with his thumbs and seeming to scan her for visible physical trauma or invisible emotional trauma, Mike couldn't tell. And he was about to open his mouth to defend himself, thinking it best to start before Levi flew into a rage, but Erna made it unnecessary as she choked out between sobs "I'm… so… tired…" She wailed as she crumpled into Levi, burying her face in his collar, "I'm so fucking tired."

As Levi held her to his chest and looked past her, Mike put his hands up in a silent gesture of apology and complete acceptance of whatever blame Levi wanted to put on him. But the fact that the short captain didn't immediately bring a blade to his throat suggested that he wasn't being held completely at fault and he let himself relax a bit.

"Come on," Levi said to Erna as he moved to pick her up, but the second she noticed the shift and registered his intent, she pushed herself off of him, stood up quick as lightning. The chair fell to the ground, the wooden clatter deafeningly loud in the abrupt silence. The sudden cessation of her sobs sucked the air out of the room. Mike didn't know what was worse, the crying or the stillness.

"Don't help me, I can walk on my own. I'm fine." Her tone was completely devoid of emotion. Her voice didn't even crack or break with the strain she had to be feeling in her throat from sobbing and wailing so hard. It was a sudden and drastic shift, the same way her episode started, it ended, just like that.

Levi sounded exhausted. "Go take a nap then."

Without looking at him or Mike, Erna began to walk away as if in a trance. She stopped in the doorway, not turning around, maybe keeping her back turned so that she could say with some conviction, "I'm not a damsel in distress and you're no white knight. I can take care of myself."

And she was gone. The air slowly returned to the room. Levi closed his eyes and ran his hands over the shorter hair of his undercut.

Mike spoke first. "Levi... She's no good like this."

Levi's eyes snapped open and glared at him, spiteful and sarcastic he retorted, "No? Didn't you hear her? She said she's fine."

"Be serious."

Levi rubbed his temples, looked down, noticed and remembered the knocked over chair and righted it, putting it back just where it should be, but with a short and frustrated air like he hated that he had the compulsion to do so; that he couldn't just leave it there. "She hasn't been sleeping right. Night terrors. I told her to quit early today and take a nap, but when I checked the room and she wasn't there I remembered that you've been doing," he paused and looked around the office, "whatever the fuck this is every day."

Mike sighed. His obligation was to do what was best for the Survey Corps, but he would rather get results without causing so much unpleasantness for his friend. "We need her to take some more responsibility. She needs to learn to be a leader."

Levi crossed his arms over his chest. "If it takes this much then why push it? Pull a squad leader out of your ass instead."

Mike wouldn't let him dismiss the idea. "You know we need squad leaders with… high survivability." That was the nicest, most euphemistic way to put it. When Levi didn't argue, he went on. "She won't even consider it. She's terrified of the idea."

"Sounds perfectly logical to me."

And Mike remembered that Levi, too, hadn't been thrilled about his promotion to squad leader and then captain. But he at least hadn't resisted it. "She needs to get over this. From what I can tell, her only block is a narcissistic certainty that if given the opportunity she'll make the wrong decisions and be at fault for lives lost."

Levi winced. Mike was sure he was on the verge of telling him to fuck off, but he went on before he could be interrupted. "Make her understand that being a leader doesn't mean being a caretaker. That people are going to die even if she makes every right decision." Mike stopped his words short and cringed as Levi looked away. He hadn't given consideration to how close to home that would hit. He was on a roll today.

Levi didn't give him any sign as to whether or not he would give any thought to what Mike was asking, but as he walked past him and out the door he said, "Not easy for everyone to think of it so objectively."

* * *

 

Levi stood in the doorway of the bedroom for a minute, thinking and listening. Erna wasn't asleep. He could tell from her breathing. But for that she looked still as a corpse, wrapped in blankets. He got into bed with her, not bothering to take his uniform off. He would stay for a few minutes and then get back to work. For now he got under the covers and molded himself against her. She didn't move or make a sound and he hoped that was just exhaustion and not her pretending to be asleep. He put an arm around her and set his hand to rest below her collarbone with the ulterior motive of checking what her heart rate was like. He'd expected a fast beat, panicked, but it was slow and normal as if nothing had happened five minutes ago. He marveled at how such a big and volatile personality could fit inside such a small person.

Levi smoothed a hand over her hair. He had no interest in what Mike had said about needing more squad leaders. If Erna wanted to then great, if she didn't, then that would be great too. She would have to work it out for herself. But if that was something she was wrestling with, then he wanted her to understand a couple of important things. There was no way to ease into it. "Do you know how many people have died under my command?" Slowly she turned herself around to face him, eyes full of confusion. After searching his face for some moments, finally she said no.

"It's.. a lot."

She stared at him mutely. The expression on her face questioning why he was telling her this.

Levi rubbed the bridge of his nose. This was turning out to be even harder than he thought it would be. "Look, you're fucking smart. You have to know that the nature of our job is that sometimes people die. It can't be avoided in most cases. It's not anyone's fault, unless they make a really shitty decision that they know is wrong or do anything with the actual intent of fucking killing people."

Erna looked down, her lips started to pout. Almost inaudibly she conceded, "I know that."

"Do you?" He tilted her chin up to look at him.

She sighed. "… Logically I do. I mean, now that you say it that way… It just doesn't feel that way." She caught herself and hurriedly added, "I mean, I don't think you or any other squad leaders are responsible for any deaths, but .. it's just…"

"You think you would be."

"Yeah…"

"Even though you have no intention of getting anyone killed and you are not shit-headed enough to consciously make decisions that you know would kill more people than they would help."

Erna's voice turned to a tone of distress and desperation, "But how do you know? How do you know if you've made a horrible decision or not?"

"Hindsight."

She narrowed her eyes at him. "That's not very helpful."

"Not my fault. It's the fucking truth. Life is shitty sometimes and I can't give you a fucking manual to study, so don't get snippy with me."

She deflated a little and seemed to go back to being exhausted and drained the way he first found her. Her voice went back to being small and quiet. "I'm sorry… I just… Can we not talk about this?"

Levi had never seen anyone go through so many emotions and attitudes in such a short amount of time. He hoped it was the lack of sleep, and he was almost inclined to drop it and let her rest. Almost. "Look, I don't care what you decide to do. It's only important to me that you don't torture yourself and make yourself guilty for shit that you don't deserve to feel guilty about." Erna huffed, turned her face away and rolled over, burying her face into the mattress with a sigh. Not his desired result. He didn't know how he could make her believe this. It wasn't even that she didn't understand what he was saying, because she was damn well smart enough to take these facts and apply them to the way she understood the world. It was just this twisted, tangled ball of self-loathing and guilt complexes that defied all of that logic being applied to herself specifically. It was painful to watch and it was difficult to feel neutral about it. He couldn't help being angry. If anyone else treated her as badly as she was treating herself he would have fucking killed them. He had to grit his teeth.

"Look, you fucking trust me, right?" Erna only murmured what sounded like an affirmative response. Clearly she didn't want to turn back around or use real words as a tacit agreement to continue this conversation. She was lucky that he loved her enough to not kick her out of bed and smack her. "Then.. Look.. I'll fucking decide when you've made a shitty decision or when you're guilty of anything. Your judgment in this area sucks, so you don't get to fucking decide anymore, got it?"

That she turned around for and with her face finally relaxed. Her lips turned up slightly. "That sounds good."

"And if I catch you feeling the wrong thing I'm going to beat all those shitty, guilty feelings out of you."

"Promise?" She sounded genuinely relieved at the prospect.

He brushed away a curl that had fallen over her face when she turned over. "We'll get started when you wake up. Go the fuck to sleep."

She turned back over, closed her eyes and yawned, "I'm right on top of that."

"Are you fine if I get back to work?" He didn't mind if she wanted him to stay. Shit around here wouldn't fall apart if he stayed in bed with her for a few hours. But he didn't want to assume anything about what she wanted.

She murmured as if she were half in a dream already, "What an insulting question… What could happen to me in bed… Perfectly fine…" So he stood up and watched her for the two seconds it took her to fall asleep. Her face was finally relaxed like he hadn't seen it in days, maybe even weeks. He left her, relieved and fairly sure that she wouldn't wake up in a cold sweat screaming like a banshee again.

* * *

 

"You're going and that's final…" Levi almost literally put his foot down as he said it just to really make the point to Erna and then he rubbed the bridge of his nose, "And fuck you for making me sound like a fucking dad."

They had been going back and forth for minutes. Erna knew about the trip into the city. There had been a meeting about it. A short one. A few squads that had been picked for a mission that Erwin was being vague about were supposed to go together for some limited R and R and to get whatever few non-essential things they felt they would personally need if they were hypothetically going to be away from Survey Corps headquarters for an extended period of time. All questions about what they were supposed to be getting ready for were shut down and no one persisted because regardless of what it was, they were just happy to get a chance to join civilization for a day. Jean called it a field trip. Erna agreed with him, but did not match his enthusiasm for it. She thought it was completely pointless and decided that she wouldn't be going. There was nothing she really needed from the city and she assumed it was an optional thing. No one had told her otherwise. Sure she got a lot of shit from her friends about not wanting to go, but no one had literally told her that she couldn't stay here… until now. And now was a little late to be hearing about how mandatory this was, since it was the morning of.

Levi and Erna hadn't even talked about it until now. He assumed that she planned on going because literally no one didn't want to go and Erna assumed that Levi would share her opinion that it was stupid and not worth their time. She had him there, but he had no choice about going and he would be damned if she got to stay while he had to suffer. And that's what their argument boiled down to. All of her points and reasons that she did not need to go were perfectly logical and Erna was learning quickly that all of his answers to those points amounted to 'you're going because I said so.' From reading in between the lines she could tell that the trip wasn't mandatory, but if she went along it would be a favor to Levi. Which is why she got a little bold in pushing at the boundaries of what he would tolerate when she took a second of silence after he told her what was final to tell him "Say please."

He didn't immediately tell her to fuck off, which was better than she hoped for, but he wasn't saying anything, which was scary. He just stared her straight in the eye in that way where she couldn't tell at all what he was thinking. It had been a long time since she'd provoked that kind of stare from him, but the result was the same as ever. Butterflies danced in her stomach and as fractions of seconds passed in silence she grew exponentially more uncomfortable and regretful as her mind ticked off all of the ways that this could end horribly.

And then he huffed, "Are you being serious?"

He was actually thinking about it. She couldn't pass up this opportunity, "Completely serious. If you ask nicely then I'll go with you," even if there was still a 50/50 shot that he would either do the thing or break her neck.

Levi looked down. He muttered something under his breath. She couldn't exactly make it out. It sounded like 'you've got to be fucking kidding me,' maybe. He raised his hand to rub the shaved hair over the back of his neck and Erna nearly bit a hole in her lip waiting to see if he would actually do it.

"Fine." He groaned as if this was physically painful. "Please," came out through gritted teeth.

Erna took a second to grasp that this was really happening and was not a dream. And after she was sure, she went with the impulse to push for more. "What was that? I didn't hear you…"

Levi closed the distance between them. His eyes were full of fire and warning, but Erna didn't flinch, she only leaned back a little bit as he stood threateningly over her. His voice was an octave lower now, "I said please do me a fucking favor and go on this stupid trip."

He was dangerously close and everything was warning her – his voice, his eyes, his clenched jaw, the visible tension in his entire body – that this was the limit of what she was able to get away with. Anything other than acquiescence would have immediate repercussions. But, of course, she didn't know what those would be and she was eternally curious when it came to Levi and his reactions. So after a beat of silence of her enjoying the tense, dangerous atmosphere, she smirked and said, "I'm not sure that was nice enough. Could you ask again, but on your knees this time?"

She was upside down, slung over his shoulder before she could even blink. As he carried her across the room to the bed, he told her, very calmly and evenly as if he weren't carrying her like a rag doll and they were just two people having a normal conversation, "Look, Erna, relationships are about compromise. Do you have to do this for me? Of course not." He tossed her onto the bed and she winced in anticipation of some kind of physical punishment, but instead he left her there and walked to the closet as he continued, "But you would be doing me a favor and I would be less miserable about the trip than I would be if you decided to stay here."

Erna was half listening to his words. Mostly she was fascinated with where this was going. This calm, measured reaction was completely unexpected and had her leaning forward on her knees and watching Levi with rapt attention as he began picking things of hers out of the closet and tossing them next to her on the bed. He kept talking as he picked up her empty pack from the closet floor, "And if you compromise on this and go with me even though you'd rather not, I'll be more likely to compromise with you in the future and will be more easily persuaded to do things that I'd rather not if it would make you happy…" He crossed the room and folded the clothes on the bed into her bag before taking it over to the dresser – he was packing for her. When he was done, both with packing, and with the lecture, he dropped the pack in front of her and waited for an answer.

"… Like what?" was her response.

"Like I could be persuaded to not encourage Hange to use you as her new research subject or partner or whatever she's into these days if you stay here. She'll be in charge while Erwin's gone and your schedule will be wide open."

Erna frowned. This wasn't fun anymore. "Okay, I'll go. But only because you said please."

"And I'm going to thank you when you get through it without being a brat."

Erna raised an eyebrow. "When? Not 'if'?"

"Don't make me regret having some faith in you." Levi muttered as he went to the closet again, finishing up packing for himself. As Erna grabbed her maneuver gear and made to leave he stopped her. "Where are you going?"

"To get my horse? I'll be setting a record if I can manage to catch her in 20 minutes with no apples for bribery."

Levi scoffed a little as if she just said something funny. "You're not riding. Not with how punchy and overtired you've been. I'm supposed to take a carriage, you can come with me."

Erna's shoulders slumped. "But –"

"If you want to get that thank you for not being a brat, now would be a good time to keep your mouth shut and do sensible things when I ask you to." She took his advice. He slung his pack over his shoulder and grabbed his maneuver gear and she followed him outside.

Erna was a little apprehensive, only because she had never seen the inside of a carriage before. Not that she expected it to be anything remarkable. But it was a new thing and she wasn't always comfortable with new things. She turned out to feel especially uncomfortable when Levi opened the carriage door to reveal Erwin already seated, looking at his watch.

"You're five minutes late," Erwin said as Levi tossed his pack under the bench seat. He grabbed Erna's to do the same, but she held it in a vice grip as she hissed under her breath at him, "You've got to be fucking kidding me."

He didn't answer her, but he grabbed her hands, quickly pressing hard on the pressure points where the thumb meets the palm making her hiss and drop the bag. He picked it up, threw it inside, and told Erwin while gesturing towards her, "I had to drag this one along." He got inside and pulled Erna in by her wrist before she could protest. "And I'm never late."

Erwin didn't argue the point with Levi. He nodded politely at Erna and said, "Good morning."

Erna couldn't say anything. Couldn't even look at him. Her eyes stayed fixated on the floor of the carriage, which had started moving the second her butt landed in the seat. She had been avoiding Erwin for at least two weeks. She even avoided thoughts  _about_ Erwin. It was too awkward. Her plan, illogical as it was, had been to completely avoid the Commander of the Survey Corps until time could erase any memories of sucking his cock blindfolded while Levi fucked her. She had figured it would only take a few years. Surely it would have been manageable if Levi hadn't pulled this bullshit.

"Are you okay?"

She could feel her face burning. She mumbled "m'fine," and looked out the window, hoping that her face wasn't as red as it felt.

"Are you sure? You don't look well."

Levi rolled his eyes at Erna. "Oh for fucks sake. Did you think you were going to be able to avoid him for the rest of your life?" Erwin shot him a questioning look and Levi told him, "She's being fucking awkward because I told her."

His eyebrows creased for a second as he tried to figure out Levi's meaning, but then it hit him. Erwin pinched the bridge of his nose, closed his eyes, and groaned. "Oh my god, Levi."

Erna tilted her head back and looked up at the roof of the carriage. She would give anything for a herd of titans to come and attack them right now.

"Why would you do that?" Erwin was in disbelief.

"How could I not? You should have seen her face. She downed half of your bottle of scotch and screamed at me in French. It was perf –  _oof_." His sentence ended short with Erna's elbow embedded deeply in his midsection.

"Erna, I'm so sorry and I completely understand if you're upset," Erwin set about doing damage control, but Erna cut him short as well, rolling her eyes and scowling.

"Just shut up. Both of you. Don't fucking apologize." She refused to look at either of them, either from embarrassment or anger, she fixed her gaze out the window again. "It's not something to be sorry about. Don't act like I'm fucking powerless or that any of it would have happened if I didn't want it. I can incapacitate you old men easily with only a little effort."

Levi rubbed his side where there would probably be a bruise in the shape of Erna's elbow later. He hissed sharply at the pain, "How are your elbows so fucking sharp? Like boney knives."

Erna ignored him and went on, "It's fine... I liked it… It's just… awkward…" The blush in her face and neck increased a little in intensity. She still couldn't stand to look at either of them. The silence that filled the space between them when she finished speaking only made it so much more awkward.

Until Levi broke the silence. "That's why we should do it again."

"Levi." Erwin chastised like this was another of his immature jokes.

"I'm serious." Levi continued completely nonchalantly, "If we do it again, without the blindfold and on purpose instead out of impulse, you won't feel so awkward about it anymore, because you will have done everything of your own volition. If you're more in control of it you won't feel so embarrassed."

As he spoke, Erna turned and looked at him, the 'are you shitting me?' in her eyes getting stronger with every word until he was done and she responded. "How… unselfish of you..."

"I know. I'm practically a saint," he matched her sarcasm.

Erna narrowed her eyes at him, staring at him, utterly unamused in contrast with how pleased he was with himself.

"Don't give me that look. You know I'm right. If we did it again it would normalize it for you and you would feel fine about it. Plus you wouldn't be jumping out of your boots and turning red whenever anyone mentions Erwin's name."

The redness in Erna's face didn't diminish, but the reason for it shifted to pure anger and irritation instead of embarrassment. She clenched her teeth hard and then pointed at the empty seat next to Erwin, "Go sit over there and shut up. I'm going to sleep until we get to the city."

He matched her stare for a few tense seconds, but she didn't back down. Levi shrugged as if he couldn't care less and moved to sit next to Erwin, letting Erna stretch out across the seat with her back turned to both of them.

Erwin didn't turn to look at Levi, but said "I'll never understand how or why she puts up with you."

"I'm a fucking gem and you're both goddamn lucky to have me in your lives. You'd think you two would get along famously with the biggest thing you have in common being the huge stick up both your asses."

"I don't –"

"Shut the fuck up or I'm requesting a transfer to the Wall Garrison as soon as we get there." Erna grumbled into the seat cushion in front of her face and enjoyed the rest of the ride in silence. She hadn't even felt tired at the start, but she slept deeply thanks to her brain's willingness to shut down for hours just for pure spite. Levi had to shake her to wake her up and pull her, still groggy and completely disoriented, out of the carriage after they arrived at their destination. She blinked and tried to take everything in. Levi opened her fingers and pressed a key into her palm.

"I already took your shit inside. Here's your room key. Be back here by 7."

She looked at the key in her hand, then at him, then asked, "Where is here?"

Levi's patience was thin as ever. He seemed to be in a hurry and there was too much going on around them with everyone having arrived together and order quickly giving way to chaos as the rest of the soldiers felt they had every right to be in vacation mode. He pointed at the boarding house behind him, "Here. This is where we're staying overnight. Do I need to shoot off a flare for you to be able to find it again? Be back here at 7 or you'll be in a world of shit."

Things were clicking slowly as Erna woke up more. She was still confused. "Can't I just stay here or hang out with you until 7? What happens at 7 anyway?"

"No, and you don't need to know."

Her voice rose, "What the fuck is that?! Why am I even here then?! I didn't even want to come!" Before she could escalate into a full blown histrionic meltdown, Erwin appeared. Placing a hand on her shoulder, which she was too groggy and disoriented to get embarrassed about and shrug off, he told her very sternly, "Erna, don't make a scene."

She blinked. "Huh? … Um.. O-okay…" It was so alien to her, being ordered to not make a scene. At Survey Corps headquarters making a scene was just part of boring everyday life. If a meal passed without someone throwing a piece of food or a plate at someone else then it was an exceedingly calm day.

Erwin's voice boomed over the clamor of more than fifty excited soldiers, "That goes for all of you." He proceeded to give them a quick speech about being on their best behavior, not doing anything to embarrass him or cast aspersion on the Survey Corps, and yes, that meant no fights with the Military Police which was apparently a recurring problem. All warnings seemed to be mostly ignored as people dispersed. Levi told Erna again, "Back here by 7, alright?"

"What the fuck am I supposed to do until then?" Erna was beyond pissed off. She hated being inside the walls in general, hated cities even more, and hated that Levi wouldn't tell her what mysterious reasoning he had behind the curfew he was trying to enforce on her.

"Do whatever you want. Just don't get in trouble."

"If I can do whatever I want then I'll lock myself in that room and stay there until it's time to go back."

Levi rolled his eyes. He looked around quickly for some solution to her obstinance. Connie and Sasha happened to be walking by, so he grabbed Connie and stopped him. "Hang out with these brats." He let go of Connie's arm and pushed Erna towards Sasha while warning them, "Don't let her out of your sight and don't do anything stupid." All three of them shared confused looks while Levi turned on his heel, done with them, and scanned the crowd of soldiers still milling around. "Oi, Krista," he shouted, making the girl stop in her tracks like a frightened deer. "You're coming with me." Levi didn't wait for an answer, but started walking purposefully away. Krista looked left and right, confused about what just happened, but afraid to get left behind and reprimanded, she jogged to catch up and follow the Captain.

Erna's eyelids lowered and her fingers balled into fists. She dug a heel into the cobblestones and ground her teeth together. Then she struggled to regain footing and balance as Sasha swiftly pulled her away.

"Come onnn. There are so many things we need to get." Sasha ran down a list of food she could only buy in the city as she dragged Erna in the direction of the downtown market. Erna pried herself out of Sasha's grip and told her and Connie as convincingly as she could, "I'll be fine. You two go ahead, you don't need to hang out with me."

Sasha was all too ready and willing to leave Erna, but Connie was a lot more apprehensive about what would happen if Levi found out that they did the exact opposite of what he just told them to do ten seconds ago. Sasha bit her lip. She liked the idea of leaving Erna behind so that she wouldn't be slowed down her quest for food, but she also didn't want to be in trouble with Levi. She bounced back and forth on the balls of her feet as if literally torn between the two options before sighing in exasperation and grabbing Erna again. "Come on. Just keep up."

* * *

 

Erna was lagging behind as much as possible. Sasha thought nothing of shoving her way right through crowds of people if they were in the way of produce or meat that she wanted, but Erna hated crowds and stood far off from their edges. Connie, at first, tried to maintain an equal distance between the two of them so that he could keep an eye on both, but he ended up letting Sasha do her thing and sticking close to Erna. She could tell why he was doing it.

"You don't have to watch me. I'm not going anywhere." Erna dejectedly turned around and sat herself on the wall over a canal that bordered the back of the outdoor market, dangling her feet over the edge and hanging her head to stare at the water.

Connie sat next to her, tilting his head back to look at the sky and the rooftops and the clouds. "Not that I don't trust you, but you look like you'd rather be anywhere else." Erna only grunted in response. "Is there somewhere you want to go after Sasha's done here?"

"Home?"

Connie looked over at her. She was literally the only person who wasn't excited to get away from headquarters and have some time to relax, inside the walls, like a normal person for a change. He could tell something was especially off. Her crankiness level was higher than usual. For example, right now she was staring down at the water while completely unconsciously and aggressively ripping the petals and leaves off of a wildflower that she must have picked out of the cracks in the cobblestones. "Easy there, killer."

Erna snapped out of it and looked at her hands. She threw the offending flower into the water. "Tch."

"Please don't punch me, but what is with you today?" Connie braced himself just in case she didn't feel like following the first part of what he said.

Sasha, finished crossing one more thing off of her list, joined them with a newly acquired bag of satsuma oranges in her arms. Erna just scowled and looked away, so Sasha answered for her. "She's obviously jealous and you are adorably naïve." She bent over to kiss Connie on the cheek before sitting down on the wall with them.

"I am  _not_  jealous. I'm just pissed. I didn't even want to come here and now I'm stuck here with you nerds."

Sasha handed Connie an orange and began unpeeling one for herself. "Sure. That makes sense. I wouldn't be jealous either if my boyfriend ditched me to hang out with the cutest girl on earth."

Connie got it now. "Ohhh…" he smirked at Erna. She was blushing furiously, still looking down at the water, fingers balled into fists on her lap.

"Fuck you both. I'm not. I don't even care," Erna grumbled, but the heat in her cheeks gave away how she really felt.

Connie finished peeling his orange and passed it to Erna as he grabbed the one Sasha was struggling to start, peeled off the rind in only a couple of seconds and handed it back. He earned another kiss on the cheek. Sasha popped the fruit into her mouth in three big sections, chewing the whole thing at once. Erna wished she enjoyed anything as much as Sasha enjoyed food. She looked so happy. Then Sasha got up, ready to push through more crowds, in search of good, ripe fuji apples this time. Before she walked away she ruffled Erna's hair and promised "Don't worry. We'll go to a coffee shop after this. That'll make you forget all about being jealous." Quickly and smoothly she grabbed the half of the orange that Erna hadn't yet finished from her hand and disappeared into the crowd.

Connie smirked at Erna. "So you're not jealous."

"Not at all," Erna answered through clenched, grinding teeth.

He clucked his tongue and looked up at the sky again. "Well that's good. Would be a pretty dumb thing to be jealous over."

Erna shot back defensively, "You're dumb!"

Connie gave her a knowing smile. She was caught. She bent over and put her head in her hands. "Ughhh. I feel so stupid… and jealous… and what the fuck? What even are they doing? Why did he make me come here if he was going to ditch me for Krista? And… and…"

Connie patted her shoulder and then quickly removed his hand when she stiffened and he remembered that no touching was probably a good rule. "I wouldn't worry about it. He probably just needed her for work related stuff. We wouldn't pick on you about it if you had any reason to feel jealous."

"I know it's not rational. That's why it feels even worse," Erna groaned. "Feelings are stupid."

Connie didn't say it because he liked his body in its current unbruised state, but this vulnerable side of her was pretty cute and a refreshing change. He thought about exploiting it and teasing her some more, but the conversation was interrupted by a shadow looming over them accompanied by a man's voice taunting, "I didn't know the Survey Corps was so desperate that they had to recruit children…"

Erna got up and turned around first, Connie let out a weary sigh before following suit. He was used to this bullshit. They, of course, turned around to see a tallish, snide looking member of the military police with a cocky smile and a self-satisfied look.

Erna looked around and played dumb. "I don't get it. Is he talking to us?"

Connie played along, "Maybe just you. You do look pretty young for your age."

Erna turned to face Connie, ignoring the MP, "You think? If that's the case, I'll gladly take the compliment."

"Or it could have been a joke about our height." Connie tilted his head down and brought a curled index finger to his chin as if he were thinking hard about it.

The MP sneered at them, clearly trying to start some trouble. "I've seen a lot of you milling around. What is the Survey Corps doing inside the walls? Shouldn't you be making yourselves useful by jumping into titans' mouths?"

Erna tapped a finger against her lips thoughtfully, "That  _does_  sound like fun…"

"Shouldn't you be collecting some graft?" Connie asked.

"Or stealing candy from infants?" Erna followed up.

"Or is bothering people who are minding their own business your only job today?" Connie wondered. Erna turned to him again ignoring the MP's glaring to speculate, "Maybe you need to get an internal promotion or two before they actually let you collect the graft?"

The MP was getting visibly frustrated, his face turning hotter and redder the more Connie and Erna refused to take him seriously. He stamped his foot to get their attention. "I'm here to make sure you eccentric animals don't cause any trouble for normal citizens!" As he shouted at them, he reached for the rifle over his shoulder, an often practiced move that normally intimidated people. It got Erna's attention. Before the soldier even got the rifle shrugged off and over his shoulder, it was lifted from his barely grasping fingers and removed from him.

Erna twirled the rifle in her hands in an unimpressed fashion. She curiously lifted it and while turning it to look at it from new angles she asked, "What were you going to do with this anyway? Shoot us?" She didn't wait for an answer as the MP moved his lips wordlessly in fear. "How do these things work anyway?"

Connie brought his palm to his forehead and shook his head. "Are you serious?"

"They don't teach shooting in the Trainee Corps." She tossed the gun back and forth between her hands carelessly, like it was a silly toy for children.

"Oh my god, you're so clueless." Connie shook his head in disappointment. "They don't cover it because everyone knows it already. You have to be the only person in the military who's never shot a gun."

"What?" Erna was completely ignoring the horrified looking MP again. "Like it's even useful... You can't kill titans with a gun."

Connie shook his head at her again. He, too, seemed to have forgotten about the MP. "It's just something everyone knows. Here." He got behind her and moved her hands and arms so that she was holding the rifle correctly up against her shoulder. She didn't put up any resistance, so he was able to arrange her quickly and easily like a mannequin. "You hold it like this. Just look down the barrel, aim it at what you want to shoot, and pull the trigger."

Erna nodded. "Got it."

"It kicks hard, but don't brace yourself or you'll just get knocked on your ass anyway. Let yourself absorb some of the shock."

Erna processed Connie's advice and relaxed her neck, rolling her shoulders once and then twice.

The MP, eyes wide as saucers, ducked down and folded in on himself, protecting any vital organs from what would be a fatal shot had Erna the mind to pull the trigger. She was not, of course, so naïve that she would fire a rifle on the edge of a crowded market in the middle of a busy city, but it was fun to pretend. She was ready to keep the charade going, but there was some murmuring and bustling in the crowds around them. She heard Connie mutter "Shit." She followed his eyeline to a figure pushing through some shoppers. Without even a full glance, she recognized the movement and colors of a military officer. She tossed the gun at the MP on the ground and only got to hear it landing on his back and bounce to the cobblestones with a thud and clatter as she turned and ran after Connie already bobbing and weaving through a thick crowd of people pushing his way back into the clusters and networks of market stalls. There was quite a bit of yelling, and for a short stretch she heard one or two sets of boots sprinting after them, but the sound faded quickly and soon enough they were able to slow down and go back to appearing nonchalant while they walked about looking for Sasha and keeping an eye out for any angry MP's. When they did find her they dodged all of her questions about why they were in such a rush to get out of there and go shopping somewhere else. When she refused to be dragged along, Connie lied and said that Erna needed to get to a coffee shop before places started closing and Sasha conceded that was a good idea. It got them moving again. Sasha and Connie led the way. Erna relaxed and floated in the current behind them so that they wouldn't see her smile to herself. This was the most fun she'd had in as long as she could even remember.

* * *

 

Just before she stepped through the doorway of the tavern just a few buildings down from their boarding house, Erna glanced up at the sky to get an idea of what time it was. It wasn't anywhere near dark out yet, but the sky was turning shades of pale, dull pastel colors. The sun was low and the moon was starting to look like a bright sliver. She had an indefinite memory of Levi asking her to be back at the room at a specific time, but she couldn't conjure up what exactly that time was. Probably late-ish, she thought. Contrary to her usual habit, she didn't stress about it. The day had started off fraught with angst, but she'd let all of that slide off of her as she hung out with Sasha and Connie. They had a really good time, doing nothing in particular, and she had a lot of fun. She liked the city. While she didn't particularly like people individually, she liked being in large masses of people for the anonymity it afforded. No one noticed a face in a crowd and that made her feel free in a different way than she felt at home. She felt very light and relaxed, and energized even though it was nearing the end of a long day. Anyway, she wouldn't stay long. Fifteen minutes at most. It would be fine. She shook any worry about it away and turned to go in, stepping firmly on Sasha's boot heel and slamming into her unchecked.

"Oof!" Sasha pushed back at Erna.

"Sorry." Erna tiptoed to look over Sasha's shoulder. It wasn't crowded enough inside to warrant potato girl blocking the doorway for that long, but when Sasha waved and headed towards a table Erna realized she had been scanning the room for their friends. She shadowed her to a big booth off to the side where Jean, Armin, and Krista were seated, mugs of beer at varying levels of fullness in front of them.

When Connie and Sasha took their seats, the only spot left was next to Krista, which made every ounce of Erna's good mood evaporate. Simultaneously she was irrationally angry at the cute blonde and even angrier at her own irrational but very real feelings. For no good reason at all, she wanted to smash the girl's head into the table, but she knew that following that impulse would make her feel shitty. She tried to hide her foolish anger, tried to not pull a chair over so violently, tried to keep her arms from crossing petulantly over her chest as she sat down, tried not to huff and sigh angrily, and failed at every one of those things in rapid succession so that Krista placed a gentle hand on her shoulder and calmly begged her to not be upset because she so obviously was.

"I'm not upset at all," Erna lied as she turned her chin up slightly and looked away as if there were something very interesting going on across the room. Connie and Sasha both rolled their eyes. Jean and Armin tensed up as if anticipating an explosion. Krista's face remained sweet, gentle, and totally accepting in a way that tested the hell out of Erna's patience.

"Fine! I am fucking upset! And I feel stupid about it, but that's what it is, I'm pissed as fuck and I'm going to be pissed until you," she grabbed Krista's hand off of her shoulder, twisted it, and bent it back painfully, "tell me why it is that I shouldn't be."

Krista winced, Connie started to get up to come to her defense, Erna held a hand up warning him to not interfere, and twisted Krista's wrist a little further until she yelped, "I'm not supposed to tell!"

Jean stood up. "Erna, don't be an ass. Krista's never hurt you or anyone. She probably couldn't even if she wanted to."

A frustrated growl escaped Erna and she abruptly let go of Krista's hand. Armin tried to diffuse the tension. "Erna, I know feeling like you don't know what's going on is frustrating, but if it was anything that might hurt you, Krista wouldn't hide it."

Erna fixed her glare on him and snapped, "Do you know something?"

The calm, comforting tone Armin was affecting gave way to trepidation, he waved his hands. "N-No. I swear."

Erna softened. She didn't like when the others seemed afraid of her… well, sometimes she liked it, but not all the time. Next to her she could see Krista rubbing the blood back into her white wrist. She felt like a monster. All she felt she could do was lay her head on the table until she started to feel less like a monster.

"Erna, don't be sad." Krista rubbed her back. After a moment with no reaction from Erna but a heavy sigh, Krista blurted out, "Levi needed my help getting you a present. There. You can be happy now."

Erna lifted her head and gave Krista a doubtful look. "What kind of present."

"It's a surprise. I shouldn't have told you. Don't tell him that I told you. Please? Just be happy? Now?"

Erna sighed again and flicked Krista's hand off of her shoulder like it was a bug. "You know I'm never 'happy.'" Knowing that tiny bit of information was almost worse than knowing nothing at all. What kind of present? Why on earth would he need Krista's help? She looked over at the bar. "Get me a beer and we're even."

* * *

 

Erna's friends were so damned  _normal_  in this setting, it was almost disorienting. She didn't know if it was because they were within civilization or if the group dynamic changed when Mikasa and Eren weren't there, or if this was just the way they acted when there were at least a couple of 100 foot stone walls between them and danger, but there was a charge that was missing from the air. There was less snark and none of the gallows humor that Erna had become accustomed to a long time ago. It was like they were just a normal group of friends on a normal night out. She didn't like it. Her attention drifted quickly away from the conversation after her first beer. Now she was occupied with an old habit of hers that she didn't practice so much anymore at home with the Survey Corps: people watching. It never started as people watching. First it was a pragmatic scan of her surroundings, finding exits, objects that were potential weapons, windows, stairs, etc. Then she would get absorbed in looking at finer details. A creaky leg on a chair across the room, for example, noted and catalogued as possibly useful information. A bottle placed precariously close to a table's edge, probably unimportant, but still noted. Only one of the lamps on the wall sputtered and flickered begging to be refilled with oil and Erna tried to ascertain a plausible reason that no one had bothered to tend to it yet. After all of that came the people watching. It wouldn't be an unfair assumption that Erna might be bad at reading people because she avoided social situations, but that assumption would be incorrect. Years of observing from a distance gave her a very good handle on how to read people and their bodies and faces, what their most likely reactions and motivations were. If her friends knew how quickly she judged people without ever talking to them they would call it unfair, but she didn't need to talk to them; people told a lot without saying a thing. Words were unreliable. People could lie when they spoke, but not with their whole body, unless they were exceptionally good at acting.

Most people that night were fairly unremarkable to her. They were probably very interesting special snowflakes if she got to know them, but she was only looking for potential problems. Harmless people weren't worth knowing about. Most people she studied in her peripheral vision looked downward or away from whomever they were speaking to a good amount, carried their shoulders down and forward a little, crossed their arms or blinked often enough that they didn't raise any red flags for her. There were only a few that she found noteworthy as being problematic. Each one a little too aggressive with their eye contact with others, unconsciously taking up more space around them with their stance, habitually carrying their shoulders further back than a person who never worried about making themselves seem big would. All hallmark signs of venal, cruel, insecure people who would literally never be able to humiliate or harm others enough to make themselves feel as worthy and important as they thought they deserved to feel. A few of them were scattered around the room. One some kind of obvious big shot at a table near theirs who continually insisted on paying for his friends drinks and making it a point to go on about how he was so much more well off than them, another across the room with a smart, shifty look that said 'criminal' to her, but not wild-eyed crazy, and not twitchy, he had some vanity about him that made her think he would never bother to cause a scene here unless he found someone he could consider a worthy adversary, so she dismissed him as unworthy of her attention. There was a woman tending bar, she exaggerated her movements and pushed a little into the personal space of anyone who came into her sphere, making it a point to be intrusive as if it were her right. Erna constructed a narrative around her being too proud and too stupid to back down even if to preserve her own life, surprised she'd survived this long, but the fact that she had meant she probably wasn't to be fucked with. She decided now that if it came up, Erna would avoid any confrontation with her. Dangerous women were more dangerous than dangerous men in her experience. Then there was a group of MP's standing in a group around the bar. She paid the most attention to them. There were open tables and even empty stools at the bar where they could have sat themselves, but they chose to stand, a subtle signal that they wanted to be up and ready to start some shit. One in particular leaned with his elbow on the bar, taking up a lot of physical space, narrowing his eyes at the others and acting dismissive of them, dominating the conversation, and making sure that no one tried to have a thought or opinion without his tacit permission. She didn't ignore the others with him. All MP's were automatically dangerous. Graduating at the top of a class of hundreds of trainees meant you had strength and quick reflexes and a certain amount of determination or ruthlessness, take a person with all of that, put them in a position of power over others weaker than themselves and you couldn't even avoid creating a monster. Erna silently shook her head to herself. No, not monsters, that was giving them too much credit, just power-hungry, cruel, insecure, sad little people. They were common enough to be completely ordinary.

With her head still tilted towards her friends as if she were listening, she kept her eyes on the group of MP's. The leaning one was a classic instigator, but which of them would actually be the most physically difficult to handle? Which one seemed the quickest? Which one was most likely to reach for their gun and use it? She watched for clues and possible answers to all of these questions until she was shocked out of her concentration by a loud noise directly in front of her. Jean reached across the table and smacked the surface in front of her again. "Hello? Erna, are you in there?"

Erna shook her head. "Huh? What?"

"We've been trying to get your attention for at least a minute." Armin said with some concern.

"Didn't think you were the daydreaming type." Connie said between sips of beer, never fully lowering the mug to the table. "It's your turn to buy a round, but if you're drunk enough to be falling asleep with your eyes open then maybe you should switch to water."

"But still get beer for the rest of us," Sasha made sure it was clear.

Erna straightened up indignantly, "It cannot be my turn yet." She looked at the table. There were way more empties there than she had expected. Silently she pointed at each one, mentally ticking off who had bought each round so far. They were right. "Shit."

"Yeah. Nice try." Jean lifted his glass. "I'll have another of the same." That snide grin, like she was his waitress.

An echo of "Same," followed Erna as she got up and made her way over to the bar. She purposefully avoided eye contact with the pushy bartender she noticed earlier and caught the attention of the older, kinder-looking bartender, sliding her money across the bar to him and waiting.

The group of five MP's down the bar from her were difficult to ignore because they made themselves that way. They made themselves almost caricatures, exaggerating every move, speaking a little louder than normal, just to ensure that they were the most noticeable things in the room. Erna realized too late that if she were truly trying to avoid confrontation she would not have made such a clear effort to ignore them. A mistake she probably wouldn't have made in the past, but she was out of practice at this since joining the Survey Corps where she considered no one dangerous and never took measures to avoid confrontation. As the loudest MP started very clearly directing his comments passively towards her, she remembered and inwardly chastised herself that a little more acknowledgment from her, a little show of the right amount of trepidation and reverence and she probably would have been as invisible to them as anyone else. By giving them no attention at all she was basically asking them to fuck her up.

The one MP was clearly attempting to provoke a reaction from her, speaking loudly to his friends, saying some really vile things about the Survey Corps and its members. She wondered if this was why Erwin had said something about not drinking in uniform or whatever during his speech this morning. She hadn't really been paying attention. She analyzed the only two options left to her now. She could continue acting as if she didn't see or hear them or she could appease them with a wince or some kind of subtle display of emotion to show that their words got to her. The first option was guaranteed to cause them to escalate until she was backed into a corner and had to do something. The second option gave her a small chance at getting out of there without incident.

"You know how they say they're all easy. Something about the suicidal missions makes Survey Corps girls hornier than in other branches…"

Erna knew those words were meant to make her blush or cry or something. She tried to look like they bothered her. She hoped the frown she managed was enough to make the idiot feel some satiation of his lust for cruelty and he would move on. She leaned on the bar, watched the back of the bartender as he got her drinks, and held her chin in her hands.

"And really depraved. Like they have no morals at all. I mean you have to be fucked up on some level to even want to join anyway, so it makes sense. Those girls will do anything. They have to treat every night like it's their last…"

Now he was looking directly at her. No more attempts were made at being subtle. Erna imagined what her face would do if she cared even a little about what he was saying and tried to do that. It was hard, because she really could not have cared less. The only thing that bothered her was that he was not ignoring her the way she wanted and she couldn't figure a way to make the group lose interest.

"Isn't that right, sweetheart?"

Erna had been concentrating so hard on her facial expression and trying to make the bartender move faster with sheer will, that she hadn't noticed the crass young MP make his way over to her. She was disappointed in her lack of awareness of her surroundings. Her brain fired out a few possible reactions for her to choose from and she went with, "Sure, it's exactly like that." Why not? She couldn't think of a single thing she could say that would diffuse the situation, so she went with agreement and sarcasm. That way he could be satisfied that he had bothered her and probably let it go at that.

As the bartender brought over a tray with full mugs of beer on it and set it down, the guy didn't let up like she had hoped. Instead he got closer, almost leaning into her. His breath was sour with alcohol. He was so close and it would be so easy to break a mug against his skull or burn him with the candle within her reach or otherwise maim him with about fifteen other potential weapons around her. He pulled the tray of beers out of her reach when she went to slide it off the bar. "How about you? Are you tryin' to have some fun?"

She looked him right in the eyes, he was so full of assumption and entitlement, he looked truly certain that he could do whatever he wanted with her whether that was to make her cry or stick his filthy limp dick in her or both, and she couldn't anymore. She said very calmly, "That doesn't even make any sense."

"Huh?"

"Well let's say I'm even indulging your logic, because to be honest, it's not so flawed. Yeah, being closer to death does probably make people relax their morals. If there were statistics on it, I wouldn't even be surprised if Corps soldiers got laid more often than anyone in any other branch. So let's go with that." She put her hand on the edge of the tray and dragged it back towards her while taking an aggressive step into him and forcing him to back up to keep balanced. "If that were the case, why would I want to waste what might be the last hours of my life fucking a boring, unimaginative, complacent wall-bound pig? Wouldn't I rather stick to my own kind and have very kinky, depraved sex with someone who gets it?"

She felt more satisfied as his eyes widened in confusion. She let him have his space once again. With a nod over her shoulder in the direction of her friends, she said, "Even if Survey Corps soldiers are dumb, reckless idiots who seem to have been beat with an ugly stick, I'd rather go with someone else who can fuck like it's their last day on earth."

She heard someone clear their throat behind her. She turned her head to see Jean. He reached past her and grabbed the tray she had her hand on, lifting it onto his forearm and balancing it easily. He held her eyes in the awkward silence for a second before saying, "You were taking too long." Erna defiantly grabbed one mug off of the tray, setting it off balance so that Jean had to right it before spilling the rest. When he had it balanced again he glared at her. "Ugly stick, huh?"

"Yeah. What of it?" Erna didn't look away. She sipped her beer and dared him to say something. Jean held her stare for a moment before looking to the MP she had been chewing out and telling him, "Trust me, man, don't bother. It's not worth the trouble that comes from sticking your dick in crazy."

Jean walked away and Erna nodded in agreement at the insult. She didn't care about looking good in front of this guy. She turned back and waved to motion the bartender over as she dismissively told the MP, "You couldn't muster the creativity it would take to imagine the shit I am into. I don't think you would even enjoy it." She thought that would be it. He would decide she was weird or repulsive and he would walk away, pride unwounded, and move on.

The guy was unflappable. He wormed his way closer to her again, completely not put off by anything she or Jean had said. His self-assuredness knew no bounds. "Let me be the judge of that. Let's go and you can show me some examples."

Erna didn't even spare him a glance. When the bartender made his way over to her she asked him for coffee. Her buzz was starting to make her feel a little lazy and less keen. He told her it would be a few minutes making it. She would wait. The MP still didn't back off. So she had a terrible, wicked idea and was in no mood to think it out to its logical conclusion before trying it.

"You want a taste of what I'm into?"

He grinned like he had won something. "I sure do, sugar." He leaned in closer and put a possessive arm around her waist. She cringed, but he didn't mind. He probably even preferred it that way. Erna felt utterly disgusted and had no doubt at all that she was about to do the right thing. She gently took his hand from her waist and coaxed him to give her his arm. He was curious and too confident to flinch or resist as she pushed up the sleeve of his jacket. She caressed the soft skin over his wrist and smiled at him, sweetly gazing into his eyes so that he wouldn't notice her sudden reach for the votive candle next to them on the bar. He didn't have the reflexes to pull his arm away before she was pouring hot liquid wax over it. Waste of cadet training honestly, she thought, he should have been able to manage that much even drunk. But nonetheless his arm was saved from the second degree burns as Erna was grabbed by her jacket and pulled back almost off her feet. It wasn't unexpected. She wasn't so out of her head that she hadn't expected the guy's friends to jump in and help. She let go of the MP's arm and the candle to throw an elbow at her attacker. She connected half as well as she would have liked, but it was good enough. She turned, ready to grab the person by the throat, but her legs were kicked out from under her before she even spun all the way around. She worried that maybe she was in more shit than she accounted for. Without taking the time to look up, she sprung up throwing all of her weight into connecting her shoulder with the midsection attached to the pair of boots in front of her. It all happened so fast there was no time to register a face until she was knocked off her feet again, her own weight and speed turned against her. She was lifted by her collar and slammed backwards, her spine connecting with the edge of the bar, the pain so intense it knocked the breath out of her. As she tried to gasp air back into her lungs her eyes focused on the assailant's face. Levi's face. He didn't look angry. His face was bored as ever, but when he spoke his voice was full of violence and malice, even though he had only a simple question, "Do you know what time it is?"

Erna couldn't speak yet, so she shook her head. She'd forgotten even that she was supposed to meet him at any particular time.

"And what are you doing here?" With a tilt of his head towards the scared shitless MP who was too shocked at seeing humanity's strongest in front of him or simply didn't have the good sense to move away from danger. It indicated that he meant 'in this entire fucking situation' and not just at this particular location. Erna coughed and gasped. Levi let go of her and waited for an explanation.

She didn't have a very good one. Pointing at the MP she said, "He was being a dick."

The MP began to stutter out a defense for himself, but Levi sighed, exasperated, and rubbed the bridge of his nose. "And you were what? Going to burn him with that candle?"

"Well that was just to start. I was gonna do other things," Erna pouted. Breaking the guy's skull on the bar had also been on her list of things to do.

Levi was beyond annoyed. "And did he physically harm you in any way?" Again the guy tried to jump in and deny any wrongdoing, but Levi held up a finger for him to stop.

Erna saw Levi's point and looked down sheepishly. "No…"

Levi sighed, "Equal retaliation, Erna. You can't respond with escalated force like that."

"Well he sexually harassed me and was an utter fucking pig. Do you want me to do the same to him?"

Levi's eyes narrowed. He took a second before answering. "I can see the bind you're in."

The MP was sweating. His friends had abandoned him. "Captain Levi, I never –"

Levi cut him off again and only addressed Erna. "You have five seconds to do whatever you're going to do and then we're leaving."

Erna turned to the bar and took her cup of coffee that had been set there at some point during all of this. She muttered before taking a sip, "He's not even worth all five."

"Three now." Levi looked at his pocket watch impatiently.

It took Erna one second to gulp down half of her coffee. It was still hot and she winced as it burned down her throat. She mourned the fact that she wouldn't get to finish it all. In another second she grabbed the wincing MP by his belt, and with her last second of time she poured the remainder of her coffee down the front of his pants. He screamed. Erna smiled. Levi rolled his eyes as the kid crumpled to the ground. He took Erna's arm and led her out of there. She didn't take her eyes off of the MP's face contorted in pain until they were completely out the door, relishing every second of it.

Once outside Erna waved to the others who had decided it would be best to go to a different bar as soon as Levi showed up. They were just outside the door deciding where to go next. Turning around as Levi pulled her away, she shouted in a sing song voice, "Bye guys! So much fun, let's do this again sometime!"

Letting go of her arm once she decided to pick up the pace and keep up, Levi growled, "I don't even have time to be properly pissed off at you."

The four and a half beers she'd consumed were definitely catching up with Erna, relieving her of her normal wariness about being sassy towards Levi. "Maybe if you'd told me what I was supposed to be meeting you for I wouldn't have forgotten about it so easily."

"If orders are so easy for you to forget then you're in the wrong line of work."

That stung. Erna took a second to regroup and mocked him spitefully, "How was your date with Krista?" A few steps after that she turned around. He had stopped walking. She studied his face, trying to find any clues as to what kind of affect her words had on him. It was so hard to tell with him. His expression didn't give anything away. He closed the distance between them and took her arm again. He ushered her inside the boarding house and up the stairs to their room and told her calmly, "Don't be jealous. It's not cute."

Before she could make any denial she was being shoved into the bathroom and told she had five minutes to shower. Her "What for?!" went unanswered. When she turned to demand some explanation the bathroom door was already slamming in her face. Erna was in the mood for an argument, but even more she was actually in the mood for a shower. Arguing could wait five minutes.

* * *

 

Erna came out of the bathroom wrapped in a fluffy towel and ready to yell some inquiries in her most shrill voice, but before she could even start a large ball of fabric hit her in the face. She fumbled to catch it before it hit the floor. Levi didn't give her time to see what it was, he just rushed her to put it on. She held it out in front of her and tried to straighten it out so she could figure out how to put it on and whether or not she even wanted to. She was growing ever more suspicious of him with the way he was acting. She couldn't even figure out what the long black thing she was holding really was. It didn't have any sleeves as far as she could see, so she didn't know how to begin putting it on. She turned it around and over a couple of times before looking up at him for some explanation. When she looked to him, her jaw nearly fell on the floor. He was wearing black pants, a white shirt and black bow tie that he was just finishing tying with practiced ease. It was disorienting enough that she wondered if she was in some bizarre dream or if she had been drugged at the bar and was hallucinating. She shook her head. Even in her dreams she wouldn't have conjured up Levi in a tux. That was too much a stretch for her imagination, too far outside the realm of possibility. Levi finished fastening his cufflinks and looked up to see how well she was progressing with getting dressed. He frowned when he saw her standing there stunned like a fish out of water.

"Like pulling teeth with you," he muttered as he walked over. He grabbed the towel off of her and told her to lift her arms. Erna was too stunned to refuse. He righted the dress she had been holding upside down, pulled open a zipper on its back and slid it over her head, spun her around and zipped her up in one fluid motion. "There." He gave her back the towel. "Dry your hair."

"Wait…" This was way too fast for Erna and it seemed like Levi knew that. Like he was intentionally giving her too little time to think.

"No time to wait." Levi made small pulls at her dress, straightening out any wrinkles. "Dry your hair and put those on," he pointed to a pair of little, black strappy kitten-heels next to the bed.

"Just a second goddamnit!" Everything was quickly slipping into place in her mind. She looked down at what she was now wearing. A slim, strapless, black, floor-length dress. She pinched a piece of it to check how real it was. "This is what you needed Krista for…" she thought out loud.

Levi sat on the edge of the bed and crossed his arms. "That thing needed to be tailored for you. She's about your size."

"Know who's exactly my size?" she snapped at him, "Me!"

Levi rolled his eyes at her as if she was making a big scene for no good reason.

"You didn't take me today because you didn't want me to ask questions about what this is all for. You're trying to rush me so I won't have time to refuse whatever you have planned."

He let out a bored sigh and checked his watch. "Also because we are actually going to be late."

"For what?" she demanded.

"Before I tell you, let me warn you that you can save the inevitable tantrum because you are going with me even if I have to drag you there kicking and screaming."

Erna crossed her arms. "I'll be the judge of that."

He glared daggers at her for a second before relenting and telling her finally, "There's a military ball. I have to go and I'm not suffering alone. It's going to be fucking stuffy and formal and you are going to be on your best behavior… We both are."

There was silence while that sunk in. Erna breathed deeply and calmed herself. She swallowed all of the things she wanted to scream. She thought it all over and said quietly, "I don't think that's a good idea."

"It is a very good idea. With you there I might not have the urge to blow my brains out afterwards like I normally do."

Erna went and sat next to him on the bed. She wrung the wetness out of her hair and explained, "I've never been to a formal anything. I don't even know how to act. I would probably cause problems without even meaning to."

Levi took the towel and dried her curls for her. "I doubt you could be any worse at it than me. If you can manage to keep your mouth shut and not say anything outright rude to anyone then you'll already be a step ahead."

"That's so comforting," Erna said sarcastically, but she bent down to put the shoes on.

Levi stood up and went to get something while Erna tried to figure out how fancy shoes work. He said, "Remember how much you fought me on even coming on this trip?"

"Yeah."

"When I found you earlier you looked like you were actually having a good time… even if you were having a good time torturing someone."

Erna paused and thought about it. Looking at her feet and wiggling her toes through the straps of her new heels. "I was, actually."

"You can't know if it's going to be shitty or not. Don't act so certain about how much you're going to hate something if it's new to you." He came back to her and clasped a necklace of shiny clear stones around her neck, just long enough to lay over her collarbone. "I, however, have done this before and know that it's going to be a pretentious shitfest of useless windbags patting each other on the back…" He took a step back and gave her a look up and down, apparently satisfied he went and got his tuxedo jacket on and added, "but there will be wine, so it's not all bad."

Erna patted her curls down some more and got up to look in the long mirror hanging next to the dresser. She frowned. She didn't like the dress or the shoes or the jewelry. "This is stupid."

"Think of it as another uniform."

Erna turned and twisted to see the rest of her. The back of the dress was cut very low and showed off her whole back. She blushed at herself.

"You never have to wear it again after this," he reassured her.

"I've never worn heels. I probably can't walk in these." Erna gave her shoes a distrustful look as if they had personally wronged her in some way.

"They're three quarters of an inch, which is the exact height of the heel on your boots, so if you need help walking we'll take you off active duty and get you a desk job." Levi was about at the end of his patience.

Erna frowned. She was just trying to delay. Nervousness pooled up inside her. All of those times she left her body and mind and blacked out, why couldn't she do that at will? A black out would be lovely right now. She wanted to look away from the mirror but she couldn't. Levi had done really well, the dress fit too perfectly, represented her too accurately in its simplicity. There were no slits, no embellishments, only the deep black fabric draped over her perfectly complementing the whiteness of the skin it left bare. This was exactly her and she wasn't comfortable with letting people see her how she really was. It was absurd, but she would have felt more comfortable if he had gotten her something bright or frilly that didn't suit her at all. She could have felt more disguised in something bright pink and puffy or turquoise and taffeta with some crystal or rhinestone accents. This dress was too real.

Levi broke her thoughts with an exaggerated huff and a very pointed look at his watch. How long had she been locked on her reflection? She groaned, "Do I look as ridiculous as I feel?"

"You look the same as ever. Only your clothes are different." In between the lines he was telling her that she was beautiful. He couldn't say it straight. She would roll her eyes and call him gross if he tried.

Erna turned again to look at her back and was about to come up with some new excuse as to why this whole thing was a bad idea and not worth trying, but just as she opened her mouth she heard a woman's moan coming from the room next to theirs and the mirror she was looking into shook a little when something hit the adjoining wall. Very quickly after that there was a different woman's voice giggling and cooing. Erna stepped back from the wall, eyes wide. Levi acted like this was nothing new, crossing the room saying "Fucking thin walls." He banged his fist about five times on the adjoining wall, but the moaning only increased. He scowled and angrily muttered something in French.

Now Erna was fascinated. She pressed her ear against the wall. She was pretty sure she could make out three different female voices alternately giggling, sighing, and moaning. She asked Levi, "Whose room is that?"

"Mike. I specifically asked to not be roomed next to him. This always happens." A rhythmic pounding started that sounded like a wooden headboard hitting the wall. Levi punched the wall again and shouted, "Putain chien cornée dégoûtante." Erna tried not to giggle, but couldn't hold it back. She covered her lips with her hand when Levi glared at her and warned, "You better be ready to go now."

"Not yet!" Erna pressed her ear to the wall again, completely intrigued. "How many women does he have over there? It sounds like a harem." On cue, Erna heard a woman fairly scream in ecstasy.

Levi grabbed her arm and pulled her away. "You can ask him when you see him later."

"He's going to be there?!" Erna suddenly felt more willing to go to this stuffy formal thing.

"Yes, but somehow I have a feeling that he's going to be even later than we are."

* * *

 

As they made their way into the huge, extravagant hall, Erna felt like she was going to hyperventilate. She dug her nails into Levi's forearm. He didn't flinch, just kept her walking and spoke lowly to her so that no one around them would hear, "This is the least dangerous place you have ever been in your entire life. These people are dumb and harmless. Just think about how easily you could kill everyone here with your bare hands. That's what I do."

Not comforting, Erna thought. She hissed through her teeth. "Give me an example."

Levi nodded straight ahead at a middle aged man chatting with a couple. "Right now I'm thinking about how easy it would be to snap that bastard's neck."

Erna turned and looked at Levi's face. "So that's why you look almost happy…"

"Exactly." He laid a hand gently on the small of her back and guided her over to some long tables at the side of the room. Erna tried her best to not look overly impressed, but it was all very overwhelming to her. These surroundings were too nice and made her feel out of place. Everything down to the bright color palette of the scenery and people around her was foreign. She wanted to go home where things were comfortingly dull and drab.

"I feel like I don't belong here." Erna told Levi very matter of factly as he took a glass from rows and rows of glasses filled with red wine on the long table.

"What you're feeling is called an imposter complex." He took a long sip. "You look like you belong here. That's all that matters. These people are too stupid to tell the difference between real status and fancy clothes."

Erna let out a long deep sigh. She tried to stop dwelling on how uncomfortable she was and just deal with the fact that she was here. There was no getting out of it. She watched Levi take another long sip of wine and it occurred to her that would help a lot with her nerves. She reached for a glass, but Levi stopped her hand and put it back at her side. "Let me catch up with you. How much did you drink before I got to you?"

"That was so long ago." Okay, really it was less than an hour ago, but her buzz was wearing off and it felt like an eternity since she'd left the bar. "If I don't have another drink soon I'm gonna get a hangover," she whined.

Levi motioned at the other end of the long table where there were little plates of food, "Why don't you eat something?" Erna glanced over and frowned. None of it looked like food to her. She didn't move. Levi cocked his head at her and gave her an exasperated sigh. "Stay right here." He gave her shoulder a slight push down when he walked away as if to cement her into place. She tried to look around without staring at anything for too long. He came back with some food that she ate without thinking or looking at it. She didn't care enough about it to try and figure out what she was eating, she just thought it was a good idea to get something into her stomach besides alcohol because the only thing that could possibly make this worse was vomiting on the floor or on someone's dress. While she ate he told her that it was perfectly fine if she wanted to stand in one place and be antisocial all night, but she needed to start acting a little more entitled. Take things without asking, act like she had a right to be there.

Erna nodded. It was uncomfortable, but he was right. She tried to pretend that they were at Headquarters where she really could do whatever she wanted within reason. Step one was to put down the empty plate and grab one of those wine glasses. Just as she brought it to her lips Levi reminded her "Don't drink it all in one gulp."

She swallowed about half of it down in a very long sip and asked him sarcastically, "Any other rules?"

Levi gazed off into the distance and told her very seriously, "Don't apologize to anyone for anything."

"Well I think I can manage those two things." She emptied the wine glass with one more exaggerated sip and as it warmed her face she felt much more ready to act like she owned the place. She placed her fingertips on the shoulder of a waiter walking by with a tray, gently stopping him and wordlessly giving him her empty glass she replaced it with a full glass of champagne from the tray in his hand. She didn't thank him or acknowledge him further and he continued on his circuit around the huge ballroom. She looked at Levi and asked, "Good?"

"Eerily good." He stole the champagne from her just as she was bringing it to her lips and he downed it in one gulp. Erna's shoulders slumped and her jaw dropped a little.

"Rules don't apply to me."

"Of course not." She rolled her eyes and looked around for another waiter. She stopped the next one who was near. Unfortunately he did not have a tray of champagne. He had some kind of tiny food thing shaped into little half spheres. She took a piece just for the sake of it and took a bite. It melted on her tongue and time stopped for her. It was the sweetest, most wonderful thing she had ever tasted in her entire life. Her eyes opened wide in wonder. Colors suddenly seemed brighter and music sounded more meaningful, the world was slightly more beautiful. She had never cared about food until this moment. She grabbed Levi's arm, showed him the remaining half of whatever it was and demanded, "What is this?"

He raised an eyebrow quizzically. "It's chocolate…"

She let go of him and popped the rest into her mouth. "It is heaven on earth and I never want to eat anything except this ever again."

"Figures… It's extremely expensive and impossible to get…" Erna didn't hear him. She was already walking away in the direction the waiter had headed off in. Levi didn't like the look in her eyes, so he reached for her apprehensively, not sure she was quite ready to go off on her own, but he suddenly thought better of it and let her go. He warned her, "Don't hurt anyone..."

Erna waved him off carelessly, "Too many rules!"

Levi expected her to come back with trays of chocolate stacked on her arms, but apparently she'd restrained herself. She came back with nothing but a smile and an aura of relaxed happiness. He rarely saw her like this. The only word for it was 'bouncy.' He was glad she'd found something to distract her from her anxiety about being an outsider, because he honestly was shit at comforting her in that area. He'd never stopped feeling like an outsider himself, so he couldn't tell her the trick to getting comfortable. The first time Erwin had made him come to one of these things he'd nearly gotten himself dishonorably discharged from the military entirely. He didn't even remember what he said, but he remembered Erwin apologizing profusely for him. He'd done everything short of groveling at the feet of the man Levi had so egregiously insulted. The Survey Corps took a hit to their funding that year. Subsequently, Levi learned to keep his mouth shut and never speak his mind no matter what shit spewed out of someone's mouth. So considering where he'd set the bar, Erna was doing spectacularly, even as she walked back to him licking melted chocolate off of her fingertips.

"Enjoying yourself?"

"Mm-hmm," she sucked the last bit of chocolate off a finger, "and I didn't hurt anyone."

"You deserve a reward," he deadpanned sarcastically and handed her a glass of wine.

"Yay me." She raised her glass and clinked it against his own, toasting herself. She wondered what she had ever been worried about. She was having a great time, chiefly because no one noticed her. The people there were so self-absorbed that she was nearly invisible to them. No matter what she did, no heads turned in her direction and no one tried to speak with her. She loved it. She wished that she could enjoy this level of anonymity more often. She sipped her wine and just over the rim of her glass she noticed a man walking towards Levi and it dawned on her that if she wanted to continue being unnoticed she would do well to separate herself from Humanity's Strongest. She began to excuse herself and step away from him, but he hooked her arm and growled low at her, "Don't you dare."

He kept up a bored and casual facade, but his arm around hers felt tighter than a bowstring. She didn't want to stick around and find out why he was so tense, but she also didn't want to create a scene with the effort and struggle she would have to put up to get her arm back from him.

"Ah, Levi," the man said as he approached them, "didn't know if I'd see you here."

Erna looked him up and down. He had a pinched face. He was sporting some sparse facial hair, not short enough to just be a five o'clock shadow, but not full enough for Erna to think he could get away with not shaving. His dark hair was starting to thin up top, but he combed it over his forehead in an apparent attempt to hide that. He had that spiteful, shifty look that she mostly saw in Military Police. She couldn't blame Levi for tightening up his arm like he was ready to throw a punch. The guy had a face that she felt just begged to be broken.

"Nile." Levi greeted him curtly with a nod and no further attempt to initiate more conversation than that. He looked right past him as if to indicate that they were done here. Erna took the cue and did the same, looking off to the side and scanning the room for any signs of more chocolate.

The man, Nile, was not put off. "So how is life out on the fringe of society? I assume you and Erwin left the titan shifter at your headquarters in the middle of nowhere where he can't harm any innocent people? I still think he'd be doing humanity more good on a dissection table."

Erna froze her face to keep from showing the pain Levi's grip was causing her. She tried to distract herself by thinking about how much compensation in the form of chocolate that she was going to demand for putting up with this and not leaving him alone with the prick.

"Zoe can tell us as more about his physiology with her studies than your hack surgeons would have been able to. You lost him, Nile. Are you going to bitch about it for a decade? If you're so hard up to uselessly mutilate a living thing why don't you go tear the wings off a bug?"

Erna tried not to snicker. Nile acted as if he hadn't just heard Levi and he changed the subject. "And who's your friend?"

Levi glared at him. "Right. I forget my manners when you're around." He pulled Erna slightly closer. "Erna, this is Nile Dog, Chief of the Military Police. Dog, this is my fiancée, Erna Raban."

Erna coughed a little, but managed to swallow her wine without choking. She tried to emulate what she had seen other conceited, self-important people do and she presented him with the back of her hand daintily rather than crushing his hand in a real handshake. She said absently as if she couldn't be bothered, "Charmed…"

Nile took her hand and sneered at Levi, "It's Dok, actually."

"That's what I said," Levi deadpanned.

"That's what I heard," Erna agreed.

"I'm a little shocked, actually, I always thought you and Erwin had a thing," Nile told Levi.

Levi scowled imperceptibly and muttered, "It's a common misconception." He swirled the wine remaining in his glass and drank it down quickly.

Erna's eyes widened as she processed Nile's meaning. She turned to look at Levi and said very emphatically, "That. Would be. So. Hot."

He let go of her arm, closed his eyes, and pinched the bridge of his nose in exasperation. Erna turned back to Nile, asking very excitedly, "Who do you think would top?"

Levi warned him, "Answer that very carefully."

Nile was finally put off by Erna's enthusiasm and Levi's severity and he excused himself with no comment on Erna's question. Erna was quite disappointed that the fun was over and she muttered to herself, "They should call him Chief of the Bitch Brigade."

Levi looked at her and let out a short sigh of annoyance. "I hate you."

"Does that mean the wedding's off?" Erna asked sarcastically.

"It's simpler to call you my fiancée. It's easier for dense people to understand and they don't ask questions."

Erna thought about that for a moment. "Wait… So we can lie to people here?"

Levi gave her a look like he was amazed by her naivete. "I don't know what you would want to lie about, but as long as it doesn't hurt anyone, go for it."

He could see the wheels in her head spinning and wondered if he'd just made a huge mistake. Suddenly she polished off her wine glass and asked, "Do you need me to stick around and scare off anyone else? I suddenly feel like mingling."

Levi felt irritated that he was going to be alone for a good portion of this thing even when he brought a date along, but he couldn't deny that he enjoyed that spark that flickered in Erna's eyes when she had mischievous ideas and he didn't hate the prospect of unleashing hell on these unsuspecting sheltered snobs. He took her empty wine glass and gave her a little shove. "I'm fine, go have fun."

Before she disappeared into the crowd, she looked over her shoulder with a smirk and reassured him, "By the way, I think you would top."

He shook his head and replied sarcastically, "Thanks for that."

* * *

 

Erna knew that she was exceptionally bad at lying under normal circumstances. That fact hadn't changed. What had changed was the company with which she was surrounded. All of these people were one of three things: too drunk, too self-centered, or too polite to notice that she was lying when she said that she was thirty years old, or the widow of a deceased banker, or the heiress of a wealthy family that owned a large share of a titansteel mining company; they simply marveled at how young she looked for her age, expressed their sympathy for her loss, or gushed that they must pick her brain for business advice over dinner sometime in the future.

Just now she was a ballerina. She had trained at the Royal Academy since she was a young girl and had joined a small classical dance company only a year ago. The people she was speaking with, a married couple, were arguing between themselves over whether they remembered seeing her. The husband stood firm that he was certain they had not seen a show by the ballet company she was attached to and the wife was deluding herself that she was completely certain she had seen Erna in a show, but just couldn't remember the name of the theater at which it was held. Erna acted like she was trying not to seem offended that they couldn't place her, "Oh it's fine, I'm probably easy to miss, I'm so much smaller than the other dancers." She looked down at the floor as if she were a little embarrassed about it.

The husband was a short, bulky man with glasses and a thick mustache. His jowls reminded Erna of a bulldog, especially when he spoke. When she cast her eyes down like she was trying to hide her hurt he said consolingly, "Oh now, now..."

His wife, who was about his age if only a little younger, and virtually covered in jewels, cried, "Oh no dear, I couldn't disagree more, I think it makes you stand out in a wonderful way. And I distinctly remember we saw you perform at the Rodez Theater last August. Remember, John? Oh what was the name of the ballet?"

"I must be losing my memory along with my youth," the husband lamented. Erna cooed and gently touched her fingertips to his shoulder. He beamed at her and laughed, "Never grow older, young lady, I must insist that you stop aging this minute." Erna smiled graciously and nodded that she wouldn't.

"It was Coppélia!" his wife exclaimed. "I remember it vividly now," she said very proudly.

Erna clapped her hands. "That was my first starring role!" She had no idea what 'Coppélia' was.

"Oh you were breathtaking, dear," the wife gushed.

A very deep, very familiar voice made Erna's stomach sink as it interrupted, "I think I saw that show."

The wife turned towards the voice, "Mr. Zacharius, what a pleasant surprise." The husband pulled him into a hearty handshake. Erna's smile vanished.

The wife introduced her to Mike and Erna stood frozen for a second. The change in her face was obvious, but they mistook the reason for it. The wife laughed and reassured Erna, "It's alright dear, he doesn't bite."

Mike flashed her a charming smile, he truly looked like he had never met her before in his life. He was better at this than she was.

Erna shook her head and regained her composure. "Of course, I'm so sorry." She daintily offered her hand. Mike bowed and kissed her fingertips. Erna blushed so hard she could feel it from her toes to her ears.

"I didn't know you were fond of the ballet, Mr. Zacharius," the wife put her hand on his arm, obviously trying to flirt.

Mike answered in that deep bass voice, "I get out once in a blue moon when work permits. I was very lucky to catch your performance." He winked at Erna.

"Wasn't she splendid?" The wife gave Mike's arm a squeeze.

"Agreed. Especially in the Doll variation. I can't think of anyone better suited for it." He shot Erna a wolfish grin.

It's hard not to frown or narrow your eyes while imagining stabbing a person to death, dismembering their body, and feeding it to wild dogs, but Erna barely managed to keep her sweet expression. "You're flattering me too much, I swear I'll die of embarrassment."

"You mustn't be humble, young lady, you must always brag about yourself; no one else is going to do it for you." The husband patted his lapels and leaned back a bit as if he had just said something terribly wise. His eyes twinkled, "Now, would you do this old fool the honor of a dance so that he could brag to his associates that he's had the pleasure of dancing with a real ballerina?"

Erna laughed delicately, "I sincerely wish I could, but I'm still recovering from a recent injury and I'm afraid I couldn't even manage a waltz without causing more harm to this poor ankle." She extended her left ankle and winced a little, imagining that it was sprained. Really she couldn't dance because she didn't have the slightest clue as to how to do it.

"Oh you poor thing," the wife cooed.

"I'll be alright, don't trouble yourselves over me. Please, go have fun," Erna begged.

The man took his wife's hand and exaggerated a chivalrous bow and she tittered at his antics. "Very well then. We'll leave you in Mr. Zacharius' very capable hands."

The husband wagged his finger at Mike as they strode toward the dance floor together and teased, "Don't you let her put an ounce of weight on that ankle or you'll have to answer to me."

Mike laughed and saluted the man. Erna smiled at them until they were out of sight. Then she allowed the scowl she had been holding back to overtake her face and she stepped on Mike's foot as hard as she could with her pointy heel. His breath hitched sharply. Before he could try to step back, Erna grabbed him by his tie and pulled him down to her level. She kept her voice low and quiet while threatening him. "Don't ruin my fun."

She let go of him and he stood up, completely unperturbed. He straightened his tie. "Not trying to."

Erna crossed her arms. "Where's your harem?"

Mike smiled fondly. "Waiting back at the room. I could only bring one date. Didn't want to make any of them jealous."

Erna sneered. "Very gracious of you."

"So you're quite the social butterfly," Mike teased.

Erna walked away muttering her response, "I'm not myself."

* * *

 

Erna found Levi again on the perimeter of the ballroom, drinking wine steadily and looking very aloof and unwelcoming. When she came up next to him he asked her, "What's with the look? Did they run out of chocolate?"

Erna huffed. She didn't want to answer in detail because she felt foolish, but she grumbled, "I was having fun and Mike ruined it."

"He does that." Levi responded knowingly. He let her fume for a moment and then he asked, "Have you given any thought to what I said in the carriage this morning?"

She immediately knew what he was talking about, because it was the only thing he'd said before she took a nap out of protest. "I stopped thinking about your stupid idea the second it left your mouth. Now the only way I would consider it is if I could watch you and Erwin fool around. I thought I didn't understand why you're okay with sharing me, but now I'm starting to get it."

He only dignified the very last part of that statement with a response, "It's called 'compersion.'"

Erna stole his wine from him and finished it. "Why do you ask?"

He glared daggers at her for pilfering his wine, but then he shrugged. There was plenty more where that came from. He nodded wordlessly and Erna's eyes followed where he was gesturing to see Erwin talking to an older man. Well, 'talking' wasn't so accurate, his body language suggested more 'begging' to Erna. And the body language of the man he was speaking to suggested that he was disinterested, irritated, and not buying any of what Erwin was selling. Levi told her, "I think it would benefit him. If I were failing that hard at anything I would want to come until I couldn't remember my name." Erna made a disgusted face at him which he ignored. "He's such a bitch to work with when he's being all morose about progress. Besides, for a minute there you looked like you were actually having fun and would be up for it."

Erna thought about that. She really was having fun. She couldn't remember ever being in this light and happy a mood. She'd had a really wonderful day and it turned out that she liked fancy parties. She could subtly manipulate people here and that was a very powerful feeling and she didn't hate it. She hated to admit that maybe Levi was right and she should ride this wave and have fun while she could, because once they were home again it would probably be all work and boredom and angst. When she gave it some real consideration, Levi was also probably right about it being a solution to her awkwardness around Erwin. If she took this chance to exert some power over him and turn the whole situation around, she would probably feel a lot less timid and embarrassed around him at work. She could go back to being sassy and sarcastic towards him, knowing that she'd bent him to her will and not the other way around. So maybe, yeah, she was up for it. Except not exactly, because she hated the sight of him pretty much bending over backwards and obviously petitioning for approval. She needed to fix that first.

"What's his deal anyway?" she asked Levi.

"It's the whole reason we're even here." Levi frowned. It was clear he hated every second of being there and even more so if it turned out to be pointless. "We need approval for the project we've been planning for the past few months, i.e. all that fucking paperwork I've had to do."

"What's the project?"

"I shouldn't tell you, but since it doesn't have a chance in hell of happening…" He leaned a little closer to her and lowered his voice so that only she would hear. "We were going to take a cadre of skilled people very far from Headquarters to set up and maintain a base of operations where Hange and her research team could safely do the experiments on Eren that she's had to hold back on. The hope was that she'd figure out a way to actually make him fucking useful and take back Wall Maria somehow."

Erna's eyes lit up. "A cadre of skilled people would include me?"

"Yes, obviously."

She beamed. "And I would be busy all of the time? There would be no more days off or time to myself?"

"You're glossing over the important part… like the part where we would hopefully make the world a safer place for all of humanity. People could return to their homes. Poverty and hunger would be reduced drastically."

"I would always have something to do and would never be bored or restless?!" Erna gripped Levi's shoulder tight in her excitement.

Levi just stared at her, eyes half-lidded. Finally he said, "… Are you fucking serious?"

Erna ignored his tone. "And all we need is that guy to make this happen?"

"There are a lot more channels of approval we would need to go through, but yes, if we got him to back it no one would be able to shoot it down."

"And who's this guy?"

Levi was in awe. He just stared at her for a moment before asking, "… Really?" No one didn't know of and recognize Commander in Chief Darius Zackly… except Erna apparently. "He's your boss. He's in charge of the whole fucking military. Literally everything you do is made possible by that man."

Erna watched him as Levi spoke. He was short in stature, white-haired, developing a lot of wrinkles around his eyes and forehead. She told Levi, "He looks tired."

"He's an old man. They usually do look tired." Levi said obviously. He was bored with talking about it, the situation was hopeless and he was already not looking forward to working day and night with Erwin, Mike, and Hange to figure out a way to accomplish their plan without Zackly's approval.

"Okay, I'll be back," Erna said absently like she wasn't even listening to him anymore. She walked straight toward Erwin and Zackly, full of graceful confidence, pausing only to grab a glass of wine from a waiter on her way. Erwin was so distracted and absorbed in his conversation, he didn't even notice her until she was taking his hand, stopping it from gesturing as he spoke, which effectively stopped his speech and train of thought. She opened his fingers and forced the wine glass into his grasp smoothly and holding his other arm affectionately she addressed Commander Zackly with a teasing smile, asking him, "Is this man bothering you?"

Zackly was obviously relieved to have Erwin's concentration broken. He smiled at Erna warmly, "I wouldn't go that far, though he is very... earnest."

Erwin was thrown off for only a second. He regained a fraction of his composure and introduced Erna so that he could hurry her along without any awkwardness. "Commander Zackly, this is Erna Raban, one of the most promising soldiers under my command."

Erna smiled, "Oh I think he's exaggerating, but I do alright for myself. Now, Commander Zackly, I hate to tear Erwin away from you, but I have two very urgent matters for him to attend to." Erwin gave her a quizzical look, but she rushed on without giving him a second to consider what she was up to. "First, I need you to drink that," she motioned to the wine glass she had forced into his hand, "and second, I believe Levi needs you right away."

Erwin was nonplussed. "It can wait." He returned his focus to Zackly.

Erna physically turned him in Levi's direction and gave him a little shove as she said, "It really can't, he said it was incredibly urgent. Don't worry, you can catch up with the Commander later," with finality. Erwin hesitated, but walked away quite mystified. Erna turned to Commander Zackly and clasped his arm, joking with him, "He's such a bore, isn't he?" The older man was clearly relieved, and too polite to outright agree with her, but he gave her a grateful smile.

While observing him with Erwin, Erna had picked up on how serious and strict Zackly was, but she was confident she could lighten up his mood. Erwin was famously charming, but he wasn't a cute, effusively bubbly young girl. Erna wasn't either, but right now she was pretending to be one. With a voice like a bell and sweet as syrup, Erna clung to him and asked, "Commander Zackly, would you dance with me?"

He let out a deep laugh. "It's been a very long time, Miss Raban. You'd be better off propositioning someone with a chance of keeping up with you."

"Well first of all, call me Erna," she demanded. "And second, I've never danced a step in my life, so if you'll lead I promise I won't notice how rusty you are. I'll be much too busy concentrating on not stepping on your toes."

* * *

 

"How many is that for you?" Erwin asked Levi as he watched him make another glass of wine vanish.

"Not enough," Levi answered grimly.

Erwin sighed. He had come over and checked in with Levi just in case Erna was telling the truth when she'd said he needed to talk with him, of course Levi had no clue what he was talking about when he asked him and now they were standing on the sidelines of the ballroom awkwardly. Erwin didn't know what to do with himself when he didn't have a task to focus on. He could, of course, set himself to charming some more funding out of the many wealthy potential donors here, but his objective with Zackly was too important for him to afford the distraction. He had been watching Zackly since he'd been whisked away by Erna, waiting for an opportune moment to interrupt them and get back to explaining how important it was to get approval for this proposal, but he wasn't finding an opening. He cast a sidelong glance at Levi and saw more murder in his eyes than usual, so he asked, "You're doing that thing where you imagine killing people again aren't you?"

"Go eat shit."

So that was a yes. Levi made military balls seem like they were so physically painful for him that Erwin almost felt bad for making him come, but it couldn't be helped. No matter how unpleasant he was, people wanted to see him at these things. As much as Levi hated it, he was somewhat of a celebrity. Erwin followed the direction of his glare to see who he might be thinking about murdering and his eyes fell on Erna who was in the middle of laughing a sweet, girlish laugh at something Zackly said to her and smacking him on the arm playfully. It was a surreal thing to watch. Strange enough to see her wearing a dress, but smiling and laughing and being sociable – even charming? It was like she was possessed by a very sweet demon and it was a little scary. Erwin was instinctually unsettled. He couldn't tell what her aim was and he didn't like when people behaved unpredictably. He decided, "I'm going over there."

Levi snapped out of his violent reverie. "Give it a rest, Erwin, you were drowning out there. It's not going to happen. You're just embarrassing yourself at this point."

"Better to try and –," Erwin began, but Levi cut him off.

"Besides, if I was a widower in my sixties with a stressful as fuck job and I had a cute young girl hanging on my arm, batting her eyelashes at me and giggling, how happy do you think I'd be to have you jump in and try to talk about work?" He didn't wait for Erwin to answer that. "Not very fucking happy." He reached to pick up a new glass of wine from the table behind him. "Learn to accept when you're failing and quit before it becomes pitiful." Erwin opened his mouth to protest, but Levi cut him off again, "I told you this was a shitty idea. I told you no one would ever go for it. Waste of my fucking time. If you ever drag me to one of these pig parties again I'll slit your fucking throat in your sleep like I should have done years ago."

Erwin was a little taken aback. That was a lot of emotion over something that wouldn't normally be such a big deal for Levi. Usually he would simply say something along the lines of 'I told you so' and leave it be. "Levi… Is there any chance that you're upset about something else?"

Levi, never taking his eyes off of Erna, drained his wine glass in a long draught, swallowed, and then pointed in her direction, asking Erwin with some distress, "Who the fuck is that girl? That's not the Erna I brought with me."

Erwin looked. Erna was chatting away enigmatically with Zackly and a few other military higher-ups he was introducing her to. She was positively effervescent, making everyone smile warmly and relax themselves around her. With true grace she steered Zackly away from the crowd presumably to talk more privately. Erwin couldn't hear her, but he was stunned to see Darius Zackly actually blush at something she said. The strict, serious Commander in Chief of the entire military who held the fate of all of the people within these walls in his hands blushed like an awkward teenager and then Erwin lost sight of them. He tried to come up with some explanation for the complete reversal in Erna's personality to assuage Levi's anxiety, but he had nothing. Maybe she'd had a stroke and these were symptoms of mild brain damage? Erwin stammered the beginning to a response that just wasn't coming to him, "I.. um.." when he looked back to Levi he was swigging down a new glass of wine. "Levi, it's perfectly reasonable to be upset, but I think you should slow down with the wine before you say or do anything you'll regret… or I'll regret…"

His words fell on deaf ears. Erwin felt he was losing control of this situation way too quickly. Especially when Levi said, "I'm going to go punch her in the throat. If she wrecks my ass then we can be sure it's really her. If she doesn't, we'll know she's an impostor and you can file a missing person report with Nile and get the military police searching the city for the real Erna."

This was one of those times where Erwin wasn't sure if Levi was joking. At those times he felt it best to act like Levi was serious just in case, so he told him very sternly, "No," and was ready to try and grab him and steer him out of there if he did try anything, though he didn't hold much hope for that going well if it came to it.

It was tense for Erwin, keeping an eye out for Zackly while still staying close to Levi who continued to silently but angrily drink enough to incapacitate a person five times his size. Minutes felt like hours and every second Erwin prayed that no one would foolishly try to approach Levi and have an actual conversation with him, because he was in no condition to fake politeness. When he got this way Erwin would normally let him leave before he could do any damage, but he knew that would be impossible right now. He was about to suggest it anyway. Maybe Levi was drunk enough to believe that he could go back to the room and trust Erwin to make sure Erna got back safely and without incident. Though Erwin didn't even trust that, so he didn't feel like promising it. The only realistic options left seemed to be that he could do nothing and be fairly certain that Levi's temper would erupt on someone soon, or he could risk leaving Levi alone to grab Erna, get both of them out of there, and accept that the night was completely wasted. He wondered if he could set up a meeting with Zackly sometime tomorrow. He mentally cursed himself for not planning ahead for something exactly like this situation. He could have predicted that Levi and Erna would be pure trouble for him, but they had both been so quiet around Headquarters lately. He hadn't had to deal with an incident involving either of them in such a relatively long time that he must have forgotten how volatile they could be. It had been so many weeks since Erna had last tried to outright kill anyone or Levi had put one of his squad in the infirmary from very purposely running them into the ground with training.

Erwin decided the option where he had a slim chance of getting both of them out of there before anything could happen was the more sensible route to take even though it carried the risk of what would happen if someone attempted to talk to Levi while Erwin looked for Erna. If he hadn't lost Mike early on, this would be so much easier.

"Erwin." When he turned to give him his attention, Levi continued, "You look fucking constipated. What has your panties all twisted? Don't fucking worry about Zackly, we'll figure something else out."

Erwin was an endlessly patient man, but Levi could make a saint lose his temper. "You want to know, Levi?" He was about to launch into a lecture about how he was sick and tired of being basically a glorified babysitter to adult people who were very good at their jobs, but hopelessly inept at everything else and so erratic that he was constantly needing to make special considerations and allowances and always tiptoeing around their eccentricities so that they could continue to be good at their jobs, but just as he opened his mouth to begin, he saw a waifish form in black out of the corner of his eye. He turned and there was Erna again, about ten yards away, still with Zackly who was looking younger every minute he spent with her. Erwin put the speech on hold and was about to tell Levi to stay there and not talk to anyone, but Erna saved him the trouble. She said something that made Zackly smile with all the warmth and sincerity in the world, then he kissed her hand and they parted ways. Without even looking around her, Erna turned and walked straight towards Erwin and Levi. She looked bright and radiant and full of grace and poise for about a second, but as soon as her back was to Zackly it was like her face began to transform back into the sullen, dark expression that Erwin was used to seeing. He never thought he would be so relieved to see her looking like she was ready to murder him and everyone in the room.

"This is stupid and I want to leave," were her first words as she came to stand in front of him and Levi.

"Thank God." Levi sighed in relief, both at the suggestion of leaving and at the fact that Erna was 'normal' again. "Let's go." He went to take her hand, but she held it up motioning for him to stop, and surprisingly he did.

"First, this is for you," she produced a cocktail napkin with a lot of writing on it from the bodice of her dress and waved it at Erwin. "This is a list of terms under which Darius has agreed to fully approve and push forward your project thingy as quickly as is fucking possible. It's a strict budget and timetable, but it's doable if you can get your ass in gear." She held it out to him and Erwin could see unmistakably Zackly's signature at the bottom of a bulleted list. "You're going to meet with him tomorrow in his office here at 10am to formalize it."

Erwin couldn't even find the words to thank her. He reached for the napkin she was holding out, but she pulled it away from his hand. He looked at her questioningly and she fixed him and Levi both with an icy stare. "First, I have demands."

"Anything." Erwin assured her. He should have known.

"Bullshit." Levi muttered.

Erna ignored him and addressed Erwin directly. "I want all of the chocolate."

That was unexpected and Erwin was a little perplexed by her wording. "… All of the chocolate here or…?"

"No. All of it. All that you can get. I want chocolate available to me at all times forever," she said with deep seriousness.

"Erna…" Erwin rubbed the bridge of his nose. "That's going to be incredibly expensive and –."

"Is it worth this?" Erna held out the cocktail napkin again. "Because I can get back in there," she motioned at the crowd behind them, "and undo everything." When Erwin hesitated, she followed up with, "I know Levi gets his own tea."

Erwin wished he was the commander of any other branch of the military. He conceded, "I can arrange something." He reached for the napkin again.

Erna waved it out of his reach again, mocking him, "You didn't think that was it, did you?"

Now Erwin gave her a cold look. She was testing the limit of his patience. "Can I have a look at the terms before I decide how much further I want to go with this negotiation?"

Erna sighed, "Fine," and she finally gave it to him. Erwin looked it over once and again as Erna explained, "We're not getting any funds for it, we take everything from the budget you already have, so it requires some fundraising if Hange needs anything she doesn't have already. I worked out that if you send us with only enough food to make the trip, plus a day's worth once we get there then you can offset the cost that way if you're really going to worry about money. The rush to start in less than a month might be a pain in the ass, but it's out of practicality because you'll want us back before winter if we're going to need to hunt and forage and supply our own food, and all around it's cheaper to do this while it's warm out. No need for extra blankets, warm clothes, and we save time if we don't need to allocate labor to chopping firewood fucking constantly. If that's too soon then you can wait until next year, because I am not going camping in the fucking snow and that is non-negotiable." She kept talking as Erwin read the shorthand version of it. There were things in here that he hadn't even considered and there were additions that would actually flesh out the project some more rather than reduce it. He concentrated on reading it, Erna's handwriting was not the best. When he finished and tuned back in to her she was finishing explaining some extra clauses involving some of the kind of governmental deceit and smoke-screening that Erwin was used to. He waited for her to finish and then he asked her, "All of these were your ideas?"

"I just told him what I thought he would approve of," she explained. "I made it all sound very positive." She told him all of this as if it was completely unremarkable and anyone else obviously would have done the same thing.

Levi disagreed with her wording, "You were flirting."

"I was working," they glared at each other and Erna snapped at him, "and don't think I didn't see you staring daggers at me and drinking enough to kill a horse. This wasn't fun for me either."

"Could have fucking warned me you planned on batting your eyelashes and giggling like a schoolgirl before I thought you were in the middle of a dissociative fugue of amnesia."

"I don't know what any of those words mean!" Erna balled her hands into fists and stomped her foot in frustration.

"Erna," Erwin boomed and they both looked at him, successfully distracted from going for each other's throats, he went on more quietly, "What else did you want?"

"Oh, right," she thought about it, looking upward as if she were mentally checking off a list, "Well we covered the chocolate thing. Other than that I just wanted you to give some consideration to what Levi suggested this morning and come back to the room with us… maybe… just this one time… like this isn't going to be a repeated offer… I've just had a really long-ass day and would probably like to relax and do some kinky things…"

"Shit yes, could we just get out of here?" Levi groaned.

Erwin was very taken aback considering how aggravated Erna had been with Levi's suggestion that morning. He hadn't given it a second's worth of thought because she had made it pretty certain that it was not something worth considering, so now he was reeling with the very sudden and drastic change in possibility. But if she was offering, and if he didn't let his habit of analytical logic get in the way, he wasn't in the mood to refuse. He didn't want to admit it outright to her, but she'd saved his ass with some extraordinary competence at deceptive seduction and manipulation and he had to say, "You've never been more attractive to me than at this moment. Let me say my goodbyes and I'll be with you two shortly."

Erna acted unexcited, but there was a little glimmer in her eye as she added one more thing to her requests, "And I want to wear your stupid bolo tie."

Erwin smirked, nodded his approval, and walked away. Levi pulled Erna to his side, curled a hand around her neck threateningly which she responded to by sighing and melting into him. He gave her a soft bite on the neck and whispered to her, "I am absolutely not fucking you with the bolo tie on."

* * *

 

Levi rushed and fumbled with the key trying to get the door to his room open. The loss of his finer motor skills was the only indication of his drunkenness. Well, that along with the string of French curse words he muttered angrily as he tried to get the key in the lock. Meanwhile Erna took her necklace off and kicked off her shoes as if the accessories personally offended her, she told Levi, "Hurry up, I can't stand being in this dress for one more second."

"Va te faire foutre… gaspillage de l'argent putain… comme mettre du rouge à lèvres sur un cochon..."  _(Fuck off.. waste of fucking money.. like putting lipstick on a pig..")_

Erna huffed and ignored Levi, turning to Erwin she said, "I was very serious about the bolo tie. You'd better go get it."

Erwin smirked and pulled the tie out of the pocket of his tuxedo pants. He placed it into her hand. Erna looked at him with slight annoyance and disbelief. "You carry this with you when you're not wearing it?"

"Just in case," Erwin answered.

Erna narrowed her eyes and her eyebrows creased. "Just in case of what? If titans attack and you need to give orders you can't fucking do it without this thing? Is it magical? Do I become Commander of the Survey Corps when I put this on?"

"For the sake of humanity I hope not," Levi interjected.

Erna mumbled to herself, "Stupid old nerds…"

Erwin untied his black bowtie and began unbuttoning the top of his shirt. Erna quickly slipped the leather strand over her head and adjusted it. Erwin couldn't help stopping and staring. He tilted his head a little to the side. Never once had he seen his bolo tie on anyone but himself and it was quite startling. He felt much more uncomfortable about it than he'd expected to. Worry washed over him that letting her wear it even for a night might have been a hastily made and poor decision on his part. Erna interrupted his wave of anxiety with an eye-roll at Levi and a huff of annoyance, "Could you hurry up before someone sees us?"

Levi growled at the key in his hand. He threw it on the ground, leaned back, and lifted his leg to kick the door in. Erwin stopped him mid-motion with the grim, serious tone that he reserved for issuing difficult orders, "Levi."

Levi turned and looked at Erwin out of deeply ingrained habit, giving Erna time to pull him back from the door before he could kick it down. Erwin picked the key up off the ground and unlocked the door, a very simple thing for a sober man. Erna let go of Levi as Erwin gently pushed the door open and she chastised him, "What was the next step going to be, Levi? Were we going to fuck with the door off the hinges?" She didn't wait for an answer. "You better not have drunk yourself impotent, because I am never doing this again."

Levi sneered at her as he entered the room ahead of Erwin, "I already told you I'm not fucking you with that ridiculous thing around your neck anyway, so don't worry about it."

Erna replied, "You have to. It's my very first order as your new Commander," and Erwin shook his head and closed the door behind them, locking it and putting the key in his pocket. He took his tuxedo jacket off and laid it on a chair as they went back and forth.

"Now you want to give me orders?"

Erna took a breath, about to shout back at him, but then she paused and seemed to really think about it. "You know what? I really don't," she said as if she didn't know what had come over her. She loosened the bolo tie and lifted it back over her head and off again, messing up her curls a little. She tossed it back to Erwin and he put it back in the pocket he had produced it from as a feeling of relief flooded him at having it back but also at being saved the trouble of trying to break up an argument between them and very likely losing this chance to relax and indulge in no strings attached sex before what was certain to be a very long dry spell for him. As soon as Mike, Levi, and Hange were away carrying out this research project, he would be tied to Headquarters with no one he could trust to take over temporarily in his absence if he wanted to come into the city for some discreet fun. He was determined to make the most of this night if he could keep Levi and Erna from bickering. He unbuttoned his shirt and left it on the chair with his jacket and he bent down to take off his shoes.

"Better," Levi grumbled, "Don't ever try that shit again." He took off his jacket and tossed it over his shoulder to her as he crossed the room to the attached bathroom, muttering about how he needed a glass of water before he became a dried out corpse.

When he was out of sight, Erna carelessly tossed his jacket into a corner of the room and she narrowed her eyes at Erwin mischievously. "I'm still okay with ordering you around."

Erwin smiled, happy to oblige, "Order away."

"Strip and sit on the bed."

Erwin wasted no time taking off what remained of his clothing. He would have gone more slowly and made a show of it for her if she'd wanted, but after voicing the order, she immediately turned to the closet and started rummaging through a bag, looking for something in a hurry. Before he could worry about what she might be searching for in the context of the situation, she pulled out a steel flask triumphantly. She turned to the bed to check that Erwin had followed instructions and she licked her lips predatorily when she took in the sight of him naked, and sitting on the edge of the foot of the bed. He gave her a cocky smirk. He was flattered until she caught herself and affected her nonchalant expression again, asking him derisively, "How do you stay in such good shape when all you do is sit behind a desk all day?" Nonetheless she came to stand in front of him, pushing his feet apart with her own to spread his knees a bit and stand between them. She ran a hand over his pecs and down his abs, as if testing how real they were. He asked, "Do you want an answer or are you just trying to mock me?"

She smiled. Not that innocent, sweet smile she had used on everyone at the ball earlier, but a subtle, wicked smile that seemed to suit the Erna that he knew much better. "Maybe a little of both," she answered and she turned around facing her back to him. "Unzip me," she ordered.

Erwin heard water running in the bathroom. He hoped that Levi wasn't thinking about taking a shower. Carrying out her instructions carefully, Erwin watched as Erna wiggled out of the long black dress. It pooled around her feet and she kicked it away, letting out a deep sigh of contentment at finally being relieved of it. He put his hands around her waist and eased her back into him a little, "Was it that horrible?" he teased. She took a few long gulps from Levi's flask in quick succession as if that were her answer. "It looked perfect on you." His hands tightened their calloused grip around her small waist, but he stopped there, waiting until she would tell him to go further. He liked seeing her take charge and get bossy for a change.

Erna lowered the flask from her lips and came up for air. "Too close to the truth," she complained. "I had to pretend to be different people so I wouldn't feel so exposed."

Erwin ghosted his lips just behind her ear, "Is that what you were doing?" He felt his cock twitch in response to the shudder that elicited from her. He would love to make her lose her composure, especially when she was making such effort to keep it together. She murmured "mm-hmm" and her head lolled a bit before she curbed her relaxation. She turned her head a little to smirk at him with her eyes and she extended her right leg straight out lifting her arms in a mock ballet pose and asking, "Do you think I could have been a ballerina?"

He laughed through his nose. Such a strange girl. He kept his hands on her sides as she curled her leg back, lowering her knee on the bed next to his thigh and then doing the same with her other leg so that she straddled his legs with her back to him.

Erwin placed his lips against the back of her neck and murmured, "You certainly are flexible," before he kissed her skin softly. Erna shuddered to her core, unconsciously she flexed her legs and squeezed them together around his a little more tightly. He marveled at her reactivity. His hard cock ached, standing just centimeters from her silky skin. His heart pounded. He wanted to make her mewl and bury himself in her mouth. He closed his eyes and saw images of his fingers carding through her black curly hair while she did her best to suck down as much of his cock as she could manage. He was broken out of his thoughts by the unmistakable sound of the shower running. Erna heard it and shouted, "What the fuck Levi?! This was your idea!"

"You both can wait five minutes!"

Erwin felt like he was caught up in a conspiracy to kill him with blue balls. Erna straightened up about to get up and go give Levi a piece of her mind. Erwin was so close, he couldn't afford for both of them to meltdown in an explosion of flaring tempers right now. His hands went back around her waist and he trailed soft kisses down her neck until she relaxed again and he let go. He brought his hands up to her shoulders and he kneaded his thumbs into the stiff muscles there. She sighed contentedly. "That feels incredible."

Erwin had been told by plenty of women that he gave amazing backrubs, but he was never sure if it was true or just complimentary, but it meant something when Erna said it because he knew she wouldn't be shy about jabbing an elbow into his side and telling him to stop poking at her if it didn't feel good. It was relaxing for him too. His heart stopped racing after a couple of minutes of busying his mind with working out her muscle knots instead of thinking about what she would look like with her eyes looking up at him lazily while he restricted her breathing with his cock buried deep in her tight throat. He worked on her in silence for a minute, marveling at how easily she relaxed, how free she was and unburdened by shame or shyness, completely unlike most people. She would probably laugh if she knew that normally women would ask for the lights to be snuffed out before getting undressed – she would probably laugh at a lot of things that normal people were shy about. This was the girl who had once told him candidly over a game of chess that she liked it when Levi made her come while cutting off her oxygen and complained that he wouldn't do it again for fear of accidentally killing her, all as if it was a perfectly normal, boring topic of conversation like talking about what was served for breakfast that day. Erna was never coy or coquettish, never seemed worried about being completely upfront about what she wanted, like demanding all of the chocolate inside Wall Sina with genuine sincerity. How exactly was he going to manage that? His mind wandered. He heard a small yelp and realized he had dug his thumb a little too hard into a small muscle knot below her neck and he apologized, kissing the spot and rubbing around it to start easing it out gently, but she whined breathlessly, "No, I like it. Do it again."

Erwin hesitated. It wasn't in his nature to intentionally hurt anyone. She sensed his reluctance and begged him again. He pressed his thumb against the hard ball of tense muscle and she sighed with disappointment, "No, it's gone. It's okay."

Erwin tilted his head. "What do you mean?"

"For a second it was that kind of pain that feels metallic and tickles around the edges of your tongue, but it's gone now." She slumped her shoulders in resignation. "Now it's more dull and sore."

Erwin was glad that she couldn't see him smirk at her curiously. She would probably accuse him of patronizing her, but really he just thought it was a little cute how strange she was. Maybe that was patronizing. He pushed against the knot and kneaded it until the tension disappeared. "You must think a about pain a lot to have so many words to describe it."

"I probably think about it as often as other people think about sex."

And Erwin wondered how often she thought other people thought about sex. He tried to guess on average how often he thought about sex, but that quickly turned into actually thinking about sex which he was trying to avoid so that he wouldn't go mad and get himself into serious trouble burying his cock into his friend's … lover? Fucktoy? Girlfriend? before he had express permission to do so. He took a deep breath and centered himself. His hands found a tense spot below her shoulder blade and Erna moaned. Erwin needed to keep talking. "Do you ever hurt yourself?"

"Don't be stupid," she answered quietly.

"I'm trying to understand."

"Mm'not obligated to help you understand just 'cause you think I'm different 'nd you're all normal." She moaned and mumbled through her objection as his fingers kneaded the muscles in her back more aggressively.

He defended himself, "Well you compared it to sex and people do masturbate." He wondered if she ever thought to stretch after training or if this much tightness was normal. He couldn't be sure because he'd never been with a woman trained in the use of 3D maneuver gear. He'd made that rule for himself the day he became a trainee cadet and it had certainly served to keep his love life and work life uncomplicated. He didn't worry about breaking the code in this instance. He knew Levi and Erna too well; they were professional soldiers to a nearly inhuman degree. They would compartmentalize this and tomorrow they would go back to unquestioningly following his orders the same as always.

"I  _do_  masturbate. I  _don't_  hurt myself," she muttered.

Erwin let it go, because she clearly wasn't in the mood to explain this even though he was genuinely a little curious in an almost scientific way, but he needed to keep talking to keep his mind from wandering too far so he picked another relevant topic. "You were pretty agitated this morning when Levi suggested this. What made you change your mind?"

Erna shrugged. He could feel her irritation at his distracting questions. She didn't have the same need to divert her attention from animalistic thoughts, she could have those thoughts and still keep her actions under control, unlike him. But she indulged his need for conversation albeit with undisguised indifference, "Well…" she started to explain, but interrupted herself to order him, "Lower…" and he obliged, working down to the small of her back. He brushed his fingers over the dimples there and shook his head fighting the urge to grab her around the waist and pull her close enough to rut into her warmth. "Fucking right there," she gasped. His eyebrows furrowed in concentration, he wondered if she was torturing him on purpose for her sadistic pleasure.

Erna sighed, finally of a mind to answer the question, "I wasn't lying when I said I liked it." She lifted the flask to her lips again, arching her back to tilt her head back probably more than was necessary. "And I was 'agitated'," she emphasized the use of his word, "because you were apologizing for it like you'd taken advantage of me, which you didn't, and that made me feel like I was supposed to be ashamed about it, but I'm not and I'm pissed off at the implication that I should be. Sex feels really fucking good and I don't get why people are so weird about it."

That, unexpectedly, made a lot of sense to Erwin. He traced his fingers over the curve of her back. "You're right."

"And maybe it's just been a long day and a lot of things have happened to change my mood and maybe I'm willing to admit that Levi was right when he said I would feel less awkward around you if I did this again but with more control over the situation."

"So you want to order me around so that you can feel better about taking orders?" Erwin smirked. "A balance to everything?"

Erna sighed when he found a spot just above her left hip that felt particularly good or painful, he couldn't discern which, and she stretched, rolling her shoulders back and murmuring, "mm-hmm and right now I'm ordering you to shut up and just keep doing that." Erwin obliged both requests silently.

"I didn't give you permission to open that," Levi said from the doorway of the bathroom. His hair was dripping wet and he held a towel around his waist, but he looked to be in a much better state than he was earlier.

Erna looked at the flask still in her hand and pouted, "I didn't think you'd be wanting it and I hardly got to drink any of the wine at that stupid party."

Levi looked past her as he came over to them and said darkly, "I wasn't talking to you." He glanced meaningfully at the black puddle of Erna's dress on the floor.

Erwin gulped and tried to lighten Levi's mood, "I had strict orders from the commanding officer in your absence."

"Is that so?" Levi looked into Erna's big grey eyes, a hint of a smirk playing across his lips.

"I didn't think we would need to wait…" Erna was only looking down at the hand Levi held his towel in. She licked her lips unconsciously and reached for it, but Levi smacked her hand away and admonished both of them, "I expect some gratitude for all the shit I put up with convincing either of you to have a little fun for once."

Erna made another impatient grab, this time successfully snatching the towel off of him and dropping it to the floor without interference, she agreed patronizingly, "You couldn't be more right, I am sooo grateful." She leaned forward and carefully wrapped her fingers around Levi's hardening cock, stroking slowly and pleading, "Now please fuck me senseless?"

Levi closed his eyes and hissed. He gently tangled his fingers in her hair. "You need to learn some patience."

She told him, "Impossible," as she leaned down, legs tight around Erwin for balance, and teasing the head of Levi's cock with a few long licks before taking it in her mouth and sucking. Levi's head tilted back and his eyes closed for only a moment, but then he lowered his head to admire her and with a feral look on his face, he stepped back, pulling her with him and stretching her out straight so that she wasn't hunched over between him and Erwin. She had to grab his hips, arch her back, and squeeze her legs tight against Erwin's thighs to keep from falling to the floor. In her new position, Erwin's cock was pressed and rubbed hard against her with every movement. He had to breathe deeply and fight the urge to buck his hips against her. Any movement from him would probably set her off balance and make her fall to the floor. He gripped the blanket on the bed, balling it up in his fists, leaning back and forcing himself not to move. Levi pressed a hand flat down against the space between her shoulder blades a little, making her dig her fingers into his thighs and strain to keep herself up as he casually said to himself, "I don't know why, but I love seeing your back curve and bend."

If Erna gripped him any more tightly with her legs she was going to start cutting off his circulation, so Erwin let go of the blanket and reached his hand around her stomach to support her. Her muscles relaxed as she stopped struggling and Levi gave him a look like he was no fun at all, but quickly his attention was diverted. Freed of the need to claw at him to hold herself up, Erna could use a hand to compensate for and pump the length of Levi's cock that she wasn't able to fit past her lips without choking. Levi tangled his hands in her hair again as he drew his hips back he tilted her head back, bending her neck painfully causing her to moan a little as he pushed forward into her mouth again with her pitifully wanton eyes looking up at him. He warned her, "Don't look down," and let go of her hair to curl one hand around her throat and graze his other thumb over her cheek as he fucked into her mouth.

Erna slid a hand down, grateful to Erwin for his consideration of her straining core muscles, and she reached past his hand that was holding her up and down her stomach to the point where his head was still poking her and smearing precum onto her skin. She took hold, her fingers caging delicately over his length while she rubbed over the head lazily with the pad of her thumb. He groaned and cursed mindlessly as she teased at the hole, hissed when she purposely scraped him a little with her nails. In his mind he wasn't in a rush, but his cock said he was aching to come and she was teasing him, so he couldn't hold back a growl of frustration. He moved his hand to the lips of her opening and she moved back to meet his fingers perfectly as if she could sense where he was at all times without looking. He didn't move at all for moments, waited for her to whimper and mewl her complaint and rock her hips back against him. He yielded to her pleading only a little, offering her the heel of his palm to rub herself against and barely brushing his fingers over her clit to reward her as she did.

She wasn't half as wet against his hand as Erwin expected and he thought it was ironically amusing that she accused Levi of alcohol induced impotence when that seemed to be what she was experiencing though she'd only drunk a very small fraction of the amount that Levi had consumed in the past few hours. And the way she bucked frantically against his hand made him think that she was well aware of how much Levi would gloat if he knew too. Being unfailingly generous, Erwin helped her out, fingertips gently teasing her lips open and slowly coaxing out tears of lubrication. She was so warm and Erwin couldn't resist gently pushing a finger inside her automatically without even thinking. He lost himself in the feeling of her soft, pliant walls until he heard a whimper and felt her jump. He immediately withdrew his finger thinking he'd hurt her, maybe she wasn't wet enough yet, but then he looked up and saw the real cause of her distress – Levi, who was teasing her mercilessly holding her by her hair and keeping her just out of reach of his cock, letting it brush over her lips and bending her neck back whenever she desperately tried to dart her tongue out and lick at it. He caught Erwin's eyes and smirked, "Got you good," confirming that of course he had made her whimper on purpose to startle Erwin out of his dreamy trance and just to be a dick. He bent himself to breathe close to her ear, "Did you want this?" He tapped the head of his swollen cock against her outstretched tongue and elicited some incoherent begging sounds from her. He narrowed his eyes wolfishly. "Such halfhearted begging. You'll have to get a little more enthusiastic than that."

It would seem cruel to Erwin if he didn't know that Erna loved the cruelty and therefore it was kindness. The paradox of that didn't trouble or distract him the way it might under other less.. 'frantic'.. circumstances. His mind went white when Erna wrapped both hands around his cock expertly massaging beads of precum in a swirl around the head and closing his shaft in her fist squeezing and tugging with just enough pressure to drive him crazy. He flashed through thoughts of coming on her stomach, in her hands, watching her lick it off her fingers. His hips bucked and his fingers unconsciously, unintentionally found her warmth again. She gasped and sighed for him as he let a finger sink into her, begged Levi with pleas that always trailed off before they were finished or got cut off by surprised yelps as Levi continued to tease her and Erwin gently crooked his long finger to find her g-spot. She rocked her hips and begged for more. Erwin couldn't stand it. He wanted to push his cock into her, feel her tight around him, be the one making her beg incoherently. He carefully slid his finger out, which provoked a high and frustrated whine from her which turned into a surprised yelp when he took both of her wrist in one hand gently removing her reaching fingers from his painfully hard cock. He took it in his own hand and rubbed the underside of his shaft against her wet lips, slicking himself up with long strokes of his hand and marveling at the completely erratic way her hips stuttered. "Levi, can I…?" was all the speech he could manage.

Levi, occupied with figuring out what was the proper amount of teasing to put Erna in tears of frustration, testing out slipping the head of his cock past her begging lips for one second and letting her think he was going to let her have it before taking it away again, looked up for a moment to see what Erwin was mumbling about. He raised an eyebrow as if to ask 'Really?' and he sneered, "You're going to have to ask her." With his right hand in her hair, he pulled her up and back until she was kneeling rather than stretched precariously out over the edge of the bed, hips hovering just above Erwin's cock. Erna gasped for breath like she was thrown into ice cold water, apparently struggling to uncloud her mind enough to form real words.

Erwin slid his hand up and massaged one of her breasts and then the other, trailing soft kisses down her spine, hoping she would give him the permission he needed before he went insane. Instead, when her mind cleared a bit, she said very clearly though she was still catching her breath, "There is no… fucking way… that thing.. is fitting inside me."

Levi snorted through his nose, and covered his mouth to suppress his laughter. Erwin groaned. He wasn't completely defeated however. He tried to bring her around, "We can work on that." He pulled her down a little and teased her opening with the head of his cock. "You just need to relax."

She bristled and tensed up, "When you say that I feel exactly the opposite of relaxed."

Levi snickered. This was too much. He started to walk away and Erna whined at him. "Get back here."

He assured her that he would. He only crossed the room to a desk near the door, grabbing the chair from it and bringing it over to set it in front of the foot of the bed, "This is too perfect and I'm more than content to watch you try and work this out."

"Cocky prick," Erna snapped at him, and would have said more, but she was interrupted by Erwin teasing a finger into her again and she closed her eyes and sighed as she pushed back against it, welcoming the quick barrage of angles and tempos he was trying in an attempt to make her come as quickly as possible, which she was obviously enjoying, arching her back, sighing, and pushing her hips back trying to fuck herself on his hand at the pace she wanted, but after a couple of minutes he could tell this was going to get him nowhere. His hands found her hips and abruptly lifted her up to where she was almost standing over him and he aggressively pressed the flat of his tongue against her wet slit. She tasted perfect. He greedily licked at her lips and began driving his tongue inside her. When he drew it out to lick swirling circles around her clit, he felt a sudden pain in his ribs sharp enough to make him pause. It took a moment for his hazy brain to register that she had kicked him. Erna twisted around, casting her eyes down at him and looking both annoyed and flustered, she said, "Don't fucking lick me, it's gross."

Erwin was dumbfounded. "Doesn't it feel good?" His hands slid upward from her hips and he rubbed circles over the dimples in the small of her back trying to get her to relax.

She blushed. "It feels good, it's just gross."

Erwin continued to feel very confused, but then Levi was able to explain for him, in between suppressed laughter, "She's disgusted by the idea of saliva lately.. thinks mouths are filthy.." He smirked, enjoying Erwin's confounded expression way too much.

"I wonder where she got that idea, you –," here would have followed a string of adjectives describing Levi's obsessive compulsiveness and phobia of dirt and germs to an extent that could only be designated as clinically insane, but then Erna lowered herself to her knees, straddling him again and she complained, "Look, it just doesn't work. If you're trying to get me to relax or come or whatever you're going to have to hurt me." And Erwin sighed and guessed he probably should have known that.

Levi thought Erwin was in completely over his head and it was fun at first, but he was just about starting to feel bad for the sap. He was sure that for someone like Erwin who was only used to shoving his dick into boring, unimaginative, though apparently very flexible, pampered rich socialites, Erna was too complicated a puzzle. Feeling very smug about it, Levi closed his eyes and offered condescendingly, "If you can't do it, I'll –," but he was cut off by the sound of a slight scuffle and a loud sharp slap like the crack of a whip followed by the familiar sound of Erna's usual cry of pain that melted and ended as a moan. His eyes snapped open and saw Erwin now sitting further back from the edge of the bed with Erna bent over his knees with her ass up and judging from the glowing red mark forming there he could assume that Erwin had just spanked her. From the way Erna gasped for breath going, "Ha… ah… fuck… fuck…" he could assume that he had done so pretty goddamn hard.

Levi stared with rapt attention. Erna writhed and wriggled as if she could get away from the burning, stinging feeling of her skin, but Erwin held her in place with a hand on her back and with the other he lightly caressed the burning red mark he'd made. She inhaled sharply and moaned at the pain but when the feeling of his hand dragging over her disappeared her eyes widened in panic and she pleaded, "Wait, give me a sec –," and then  _*CRACK*_ , even Levi flinched a little. Erna screamed.

"Oh.. pretty good.." Levi smirked, not wanting to seem too impressed. Apparently he didn't know as well as he thought he did what Erwin was really capable of. Erwin had that cold expression on his face that he always had when he was concentrating on a task or a problem and Levi thought he would be more worried for Erna if he didn't know that she wasn't half as delicate as she looked and could break every bone in those big hands without blinking if she thought she needed to. So, far from worrying, he leaned back in his chair and stroked himself lazily as he watched Erwin put his toy through a lot more pain than he had been comfortable giving her lately. Maybe he was getting soft with her or more wary of pushing her limits. He would amend that later. Another crack had Erna hissing and spitting just like a cat. Levi was thoroughly enjoying the chance to see her reactions from a different angle and without having to do any work. He could fully focus on how well her muscles contorted as she stretched and twisted, seeking some relief from the pain. He caught tears welling up in her eyes just enough to wet her long eyelashes, not streaking down her cheeks yet. She bit her lip and butted her forehead against the mattress. The sound of her deep, sharp exhalations, ragged and so close to becoming sobs did something to the nerves at the base of his spine and made precum leak from his cock and wet his fingers. He couldn't resist patronizing her with his voice full of evil sarcasm, "You going to make it?"

Erna hissed and gasped, she lifted her head from the soft mattress. "It's… aish.. It's good, I just…" she squirmed trying to cope with the pain and also get out the words she was reaching for, but Erwin was relentless and cut off her attempted train of thought with another hard smack. She wailed and moaned and tears pricked and itched at the corners of her eyes. If he was trying to not give her time to think too much he was being remarkably successful. All her ability to make language disappeared for a moment and all she could do was hiss "fuck.. fuck.." over and over. He was so much less passionate, but at the same time so much more brutal than Levi. His hands were bigger and rougher and he didn't warm her up slowly the way Levi did, which she usually complained about because she thought it would be preferable if he just started off as hard as possible, but somewhere deep in the back of her mind she decided she would never complain again, but even that amount of thought was whited out with static and made impossible when she was jolted by the sting and impact of another blow. Her fingers twisted and tangled the sheets into her white-knuckled fists and her toes curled and uncurled. The next one missed as she unconsciously flinched away from it, unaware and out of control of her body's actions anymore.

Erwin wouldn't have that. She'd asked for pain and if that was what she wanted he could certainly give her as much as she could handle until she begged him to stop. He was on a mission now to push her over the edge and out of her ego, get her into that pliant, eager, selfless state he had seen her in when he'd had the privilege of stretching her jaw out around his cock in Levi's apartment. He pressed his hand down on the small of her back, flattening her against him and better holding her in place as he rained down a flurry of smacks to her sweet, round little ass without any seconds in between for her to recover.

Erna felt herself disappear a little the way she did when her body flooded with endorphins. She was still very much there, but she wasn't a person so much anymore, just a nebulous accumulation of primal feelings and urges, free from any anxiety or conscience. It didn't stop her body from writhing on its own or her mouth from spouting curse words and babbling half-formed attempts at speech, but she was no longer aware of either of those things, all of her concentration focused on the ecstasy of her brain's chemical response to the extreme pain. "Fuck.. ah.. I can't…" Every blow ripped words out of her. "Please… unh… fuck… Daddy, please…"

And then, very abruptly, it all stopped. She whined as she felt herself slowly float back into her body and she let out a frustrated cry as the ecstatic feeling waned. But there was no response and the room was too quiet, all the air sucked out of it. She opened her eyes and craned her neck to try and see what was the matter until Levi said, "Did you just call him 'Daddy?'"

Erna groaned. She never really heard the things she said in the moment, but the possibility was thoroughly humiliating.

Levi teased Erwin who looked like he'd just been shocked by an electric spark, "I mean, it makes sense. You're probably a displaced father figure to way more soldiers under your command than you realize."

"Oh my god…" Erna hid her head in her hands. She thought, if it were possible to die of embarrassment, then now would be a great time for that to happen.

"Good to know you have daddy issues," Levi taunted her, enjoying how she flushed all over, almost matching the red welts on her ass.

Erwin interrupted Levi, his voice deeper and huskier than normal, "I think I like it." He brushed some curls away from Erna's face and tilted her chin towards him, but she couldn't open her eyes to look at him yet. He requested just the same, "Say it again."

"I caaan't…" Erna whined and pouted, "It's too embarrassing…"

"I'm sure you can," Erwin coaxed her his voice dripping with sweetness and lust, but when she shook her head and shut her lips tight, he didn't offer any more enticement except another rough slap, this time against her upper thigh where the nerves hadn't been dulled yet. It stung sharp and Erna screamed in surprise. It took a few more before he was able to rip the words out of her again, "Fuck.. Daddy.. Please.. Please.. Daddy.. Oh my.. god.. Please.." she begged keenly in between racking gasps and sobs.

The smile that came over Erwin's face was positively feral. He cupped his hand around her throat, lifting her limp body up and holding her close as she shuddered over and over again, he whispered darkly in her ear, "Please what, you sweet little girl?" and he held his other hand poised, close enough to her needy slit to feel the warmth radiating from her.

Her pupils were blown wide. She was past the point of shame, nothing mattered to her anymore but getting her release. "Please can I…" the power of speech abandoned her midway and she simply moaned and pushed herself against his palm trying to get some friction on her clit, the motion pushing her throat a little harder against his grasp at the same time and giving her the delicious dizzy feeling that came from losing her breath.

"Can you what?" He removed his hand from her throat and used it to hold her hips still, not wanting to let her get herself off until she asked for it.

"Unhh…" she struggled to get the words out with her mind all foggy. "Please please please let me come…" she begged frantically.

"You can do better than that," he pressed two fingers to her clit for motivation.

Erna's hips jolted forward towards the brief sensation of contact and just like that Erwin took his fingers away again making her cry out in frustration, "Please, Daddy, let me come, please please…"

And she would have kept on saying please forever if he hadn't rewarded her immediately rubbing lazy circles over her clit and speaking soft, soothing words, "Good girl, make yourself come on Daddy's fingers…"

She couldn't hold herself back from bucking wildly against his hand as he slid a finger inside her, but her body flushed and her face burned. It was getting easier for her to say it, but to hear him say it reminded her how humiliating it was. It felt wrong and dirty and she loved it while simultaneously feeling very debased. It made her orgasm that much more intense and prolonged when he pushed a second finger inside filling her completely as he let her rock against his hand. Her hips stuttered and her mind went white as she felt the explosive orgasm overtake her. She came back into herself with her forehead pressed against his shoulder, her whole body sagging boneless against him. She squealed a little when he eased his fingers out of her.

"Fuck," Levi groaned. Erna turned her head around and saw Levi looking as annoyed and pissy as a wet cat. Her eyes tracked down and discovered the reason. His abs were streaked in come. She pouted, sullen about missing out. She liked watching him jerk off and he almost never indulged her. He got up, presumably to go get a washcloth or, another shower and he muttered darkly, "You're both depraved."

Erna wanted to say something snarky, but she was quickly feeling too lazy for snark. Her body was heavy and her brain dizzy. She hummed, nuzzling into the crook of Erwin's neck half asleep.

"I trust you feel more relaxed now," He murmured in her ear questioningly.

"Mm-hmm."

Erwin ran his fingers through her hair soothingly and murmured his praise for her, telling her she was a good girl among other things, and through her sleepy haze Erna was surprised that she liked it so much. She nuzzled against him and nipped at his jaw encouraging him to go on until she felt his fingers press against her again and she whined, canting her hips away, not wanting to be bothered and broken out of her sleepy post orgasmic bliss, but in avoiding his hand she rubbed up against his cock and she felt him exhale deeply. He shuddered a little and grunted quietly. It occurred to her that maybe she was being a bit unfair. She opened her eyes and looked down sleepily. His cock looked painfully hard. She reached down lazily, still feeling tired and boneless, but she took him in her hand and watched him buck his hips involuntarily in response. He stopped saying anything. Now he looked only able to pant, watch her play with his cock, and grip the sheets hard in what looked like a losing battle with what restraint he had left. It made Erna feel powerful, made her want to see what else she could make him do.

She stroked him much too slowly to make him come no matter how worked up he was and he was beginning to look absolutely wrecked. His bright blue eyes were heavy-lidded and entirely focused on her hand, never looking up to notice how she studied his face with curiosity. His lips parted as she pressed a finger against the slit of his cock and he let out a small grunt. She wanted more, so she pumped hard a few times, swirling her palm over the head on every upstroke, bringing him to the edge and then stopping, holding her hand still and tightly wrapped around the base of his shaft. The way he moaned sparked something wicked inside her and she smiled, watching his mussed hair just begin to stick to his damp forehead. When her hand stopped moving he rolled his hips trying to keep the pressure building up to a release, so she let go. He gave her a devastated look. She was cruel. She brought her hand to her lips and licked his precum off of her fingers, staring into his eyes the whole time. He groaned, frustrated and defeated and completely desperate. She asked him mockingly with feigned innocence, "Did you want to fuck me, Daddy?"

"If you're trying to kill him there are faster ways to do it than depriving the brain of blood circulation." Erna turned around to glare at Levi as he emerged from the bathroom, cleaned up again.

"I'm not trying to, but it might be an unintended consequence." She turned back to Erwin and licked her lips as she took his huge cock in her hands again, noticing now that she couldn't fully reach her fingers all the way around it, her brows knitted in apprehension and she said quietly to herself, "I still don't think it's going to work."

Erwin placed a hand over hers and stroked himself and said somewhat desperately, "It will fit." He looked into her eyes and reassured her, "I'll go as slow as you need me to."

Erna still didn't see how it was physically possible, but the man had just given her the most intense orgasm she would probably ever experience in her life, so she thought it would be heartless to not at least try. She nodded that it was okay with her and without delay Erwin's hand reached between her legs and set off jolts of oversensitivity through her whole body, shaking and clawing at his muscular shoulders she begged greedily, bade him to curl his fingers, there, slow down, speed up, and then she couldn't think anymore, melting bonelessly she slumped and let herself fall back. She stretched lazily, luxuriating in the softness of the bed, not even caring when Erwin lifted her knees over his shoulders and teased her clit with his tongue. She was too far gone to think about whether or not she thought it was gross, it just felt too good. He added a finger to the one already filling her and her hands reached for his hair, needing something to hold on to. She closed her eyes and saw only white until she felt something soft but firm slide over her parted lips. She opened her eyes halfway to see Levi kneeling on the bed next to her. She wrapped her lips around him and sucked his cock hungrily, making him hiss in surprise at how abruptly she took all of him in her mouth. It felt so good to have something in her mouth, mitigated the intensity of sensation she was feeling and gave her something to focus on. Her cheeks hollowed as she slurped and sucked at Levi, moaning loudly around his cock, tilting her head to better position herself so that she could swallow him down to the base. She felt dreamy and a bit like she was floating, she distantly noticed the loss of the full feeling between her legs, but before she could whine about it there was a dull but insistent pain replacing it. She didn't mind much until Erwin pushed a little further the pain became blinding. She winced and grazed Levi with her teeth before catching herself and stopping her jaw from clenching. He wasn't risking it. He pulled back from her mouth and hissed at Erwin, "Don't make her bite my fucking dick off."

Erwin ignored Levi, but he halted himself and took a deep breath. He was only just barely in and Erna was so tight he wasn't sure if this really was going to work. He wrestled with conflicting impulses, his better angels telling him not to hurt her any further and his demons demanding that he fuck into the tight, wet heat around his cock immediately without any care for her comfort. He closed his eyes and centered himself then he looked down and smoothed away the hair that strayed over her tightly creased eyebrows as he asked, "Do you want me to stop?"

Erna took some deep, panting breaths and shook her head and advised him, "Just… slow…"

Levi gave him a look that said, 'if you break my toy I'll kill you,' and Erwin nodded. With a deep breath he drew out a little and pushed back in only as far as he had just been.

Levi was conflicted. On one hand it was a really hot scene to watch but on the other hand he hated to see Erna in pain that she didn't actually enjoy. Additionally he wanted to bury his cock in her pretty little mouth, but he wasn't going to do it with the threat of her teeth clenching like a steel trap at any moment. He needed to do something about this whole situation and after some quick thought he had an idea. He told Erna, "Look at me."

She opened her eyes and did as she was told. He trailed his fingertips gently over her cheek and down to her throat. His thumb pushed past her lips to give her something to distract herself that wouldn't kill him if she accidentally bit down. Erna licked and sucked at the calloused pad of his thumb as his fingers reached around under her jaw and found her pulse. He shushed her and muttered, "You really are doing fine.." and he took his thumb from her mouth, spreading his hand out over her throat and pressing down slowly. He always caught her holding her breath, trying to achieve that intense asphyxiated orgasm when he was fucking her. Normally he would stop and refuse to keep going until she breathed again, too worried about the potential harm a lack of oxygen could cause just for the sake of giving her a mind-blowing orgasm. Breath play took too much care and attention for him to be willing to let her try it while he was fucking her, but right now he felt he could be attentive enough if it would make her feel good and calm down. He didn't have to choke her, the second he put his hand on her neck and she understood that she had permission, she let all the air out of her lungs on her own. He just had to keep his fingers on her pulse.

Erna didn't know if Levi would ever really understand the way she felt when her breath left her and that rush of euphoria came and made it so that nothing at all mattered but everything felt good. So much more good than she thought anyone who hadn't experienced it could imagine. It was an addiction from the very first time and it was so hard not to indulge when it was something so easy as simply not breathing anymore. Her eyes got glassy and everything blurred and soon she fell into a haze of orgasmic bliss, rolling her hips and wrapping her legs around Erwin she let her nagging consciousness order her to take a breath before Levi had to shake her head and remind her to do it himself. Her chest rose and fell in deep breaths and she begged Erwin to fuck her harder. The slow carefulness that he still deemed very necessary was driving her crazy.

"Oh my god.. Erwin.. Just… Fuck me..." She rolled her hips and tried to convince him that it was fine now. More than fine, she was so close to another orgasm and all she needed him to do was actually move before whatever chemical reaction was happening in her brain faded. But infuriatingly he held her hips still and murmured, "Easy…"

She wriggled anyway, trying to get him deeper into her and she whined in annoyance, "No, just  _give_  it to me."

Her breathing and pulse rate must have returned to near normal because Levi took his hand away from her neck, raked his fingers into her hair and slid his cock over her lips again. Erna sucked him down greedily, just wanting to be full and be used and forget everything for a minute. She wasn't waiting for Erwin. She locked her legs around his waist and pulled him into her almost all the way to the base in one quick motion. He moaned and cursed in shock while she ground herself on his cock, determined to get off whether he was going to cooperate or not, but he regrouped quickly and lifted her hips so that he could thrust faster and deeper.

She was so tight around him, Erwin feared he wouldn't last long but just as quickly as he had that thought he was beyond the point of caring. All that mattered right now to him was the pressure coiling in his abdomen. He put a hand around the small of Erna's back to hold her hips up and his other hand reached behind him and grabbed one of her ankles. He had to fight with her a little to convince her to let go of the stranglehold her legs had around his waist. She must have thought he was going to try to withdraw and go slowly again, but really he needed to get her leg out of the way because it was preventing him from driving into her all the way to the base. When she finally relaxed her hold, he lifted her ankle up and in front of him to press against his chest, thanking whatever god that she was flexible and with one aggressive thrust bottoming out all the way inside her.

She shuddered, her hips bucking wildly, and might have moaned loudly enough to wake the whole house if Levi hadn't kept her throat blocked. A few long, deep, fast thrusts and Erna came, her walls constricting around Erwin so tightly that he could scarcely move for a moment other than to throw his head back and close his eyes. When the muscle contractions ceased he railed into her, unable to keep up any discernible rhythm as he gave in to the urge to just push his hips into her as hard as he could. Levi repositioned her head a little and thrust hard all the way into her throat. His hips stuttered as he felt her throat close and try to push out the intrusion. When he came she dug her nails into his thigh, pushing him away and freeing up her airway for a fit of coughing. Every spasm made her tighten up around Erwin again and he couldn't hold back anymore. He let go of Erna's ankle that he had been holding up and pulled out. With barely one full solid stroke of his hand he came in the longest, shuddering orgasm he'd experienced in as long as he could remember.

He didn't get to enjoy the afterglow.

Erna's coughing finally abated enough for her to hiss shrilly at Levi, "You can't just come all the way in my throat like that."

"Wasn't thinking," Levi muttered in a half apology. "Get the fuck up, both of you, so I can pull the sheets off."

Erwin got to his feet though his legs felt very wobbly. Erna didn't bother, curling herself up like a stubborn cat and letting Levi pull the sheets out from underneath her as he told her, "Go brush your teeth or your breath is gonna smell like come."

"Won't breathe on you," she mumbled. Levi grabbed her by the ankle and started to drag her off the bed, but there was a flurry of limbs as she kicked at him and grabbed for the headboard. He decided it wasn't worth it. He picked up the quilt at the foot of the bed and threw it at her head for which she thanked him as she lazily unraveled it just enough to cover herself. She buried her face into a pillow and began to breathe deeply with the onset of sleep. Erwin's legs felt too weak to stand anymore and he lowered himself onto the bed next to her.

Levi took issue with this. "You are not sleeping here. Go back to your own room." Erwin was too sleepy to even open his mouth in response. He waved him off and Levi started shouting, "The bed isn't big enough, you fucking tree." But it seemed Erwin was already asleep.

"Goddamnit," Levi murmured to himself, rubbing a hand over the back of his neck and looking around the room. He couldn't deal with this right now. Instead he straightened up, folding and putting away all the discarded clothes, setting shoes by the door. When he finished he stood in the middle of the room wondering if he should take another shower until the silence was broken by Erna, voice quiet and half asleep, pleading, "Levi, no more cleaning, come to bed."

As he got into bed, gently shoving her over as far as he could to make room for himself, she complained, "Can't sleep without you."

When he got comfortable and lay still she latched onto him, nuzzling her face into his chest. He smoothed a hand over her hair for a minute, then he whispered, "Hey Erna."

"Mm-hmm?"

"If you ever call me 'Daddy,' I'm not putting my dick anywhere near you for a month."

She assured him sleepily, "Would never think of you that way. You're too immature."

He gave her hair a light tug at which she sighed contentedly and pulled him closer.

* * *

 

Erwin snuck out quietly the next morning. He'd woken up later than he would have liked and needed to get back to his room, clean himself up, and change and see if he could fit breakfast in before meeting with Zackly.

He was still in a daze. After shutting the door of Levi and Erna's room behind him, he stood in the hallways for a second trying to get himself oriented and figure out which direction his own room was. Just as he decided it was probably off to the left, he heard the click of a door and froze. He turned in the direction of the noise and saw Mike stepping out into the hall, already dressed and ready for the day. Mike gave Erwin a long look and for a second made Erwin feel very self-conscious about still being in his tux from last night. Erwin stared back at the man. Mike sniffed the air and grinned.

"Shut up, Mike," Erwin said tiredly as he went off to find his room.

"I didn't say a word… Daddy…"

Erwin groaned and Mike tapped a fist against the wall of the hallway, saying, "Thin walls."


	23. Safe Word Protocol

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Short, drabble chapter to make up for the length of the last one.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you go back to Ch5, I have Erna's birthday as November 12th (because obvs Scorpio) I changed it here to 'undetermined.' Please ignore this plothole because it is hard work to go back and edit old chapters.

The "library" at Survey Corps Headquarters was a small-ish room when compared with any of the other rooms designated as shared public space. That was the first sign that it wasn't deemed especially important by most people. The second sign was the contents and organization of its shelves. No one was specifically assigned to keep the books in order. It was more of an honor system where things were only kept neat if the people who used the library were inclined to keep it that way.

It was only difficult to find things if you were looking for anything very specific. Books tended to stay within their sections though that was the extent of the level of organization… and sometimes they were in piles on the floor instead of on a shelf.

Easily the most well-organized part of the library was the section of shelves dedicated to Hange's old research notes. Binders and notebooks of them filled one large double sided bookshelf and they were organized by Hange. They stayed that way because she was the only one who ever wanted to read them… except for Erna who was situated on the floor, on her back, stretched out and reading an old notebook of Hange's that she held at arm's length up over her face. She used to start out reading in the chairs around one of the few tables there, but always ended up stretched out on the floor as she gradually adjusted herself every so often to get a little more comfortable. So now she just started out there. It was easier to concentrate when she didn't have a straight-backed wooden chair making her bones poke at her skin and distract her. That's the way she thought of it anyway. The floor was stone and arguably not at all more comfortable than a chair, but she liked it for the freedom of being able to arrange herself however she wanted.

Armin was the same way, the difference being that he always folded his limbs in different positions rather than laying down and stretching out like Erna was prone to do. He sat cross-legged on the floor across from her, one hand splayed to cradle the spine of a book in his palm.

They did this sort of often. Not planning to. It just happened that way. Armin spent a few hours there in between training and dinner every day. Erna showed up sporadically. Some days she was already there for hours before Armin could get away from training and some days she wouldn't appear at all. Her schedule was still non-existent. She remained unattached to any squad while Erwin decided what would be the best way to utilize her. Sometimes she had to meet with him, sometimes Mike had to pick her brain, and some days she was just left alone.

On days where she was left alone, she was still going out past the wall around Headquarters, secretly putting her life in danger to practice killing titans as efficiently and with as few resources as possible. On days where she got put under the microscope, she spent what free time was left reading in the library because it was quiet, no one bothered her, and maybe she could find something illuminating in Hange's notes. She was there searching for an "A-ha" moment. Something that would make everything click and make sense of … something. She didn't know what. She ultimately just wanted to figure out a way to decrease the number of lives lost in every titan encounter. Maybe there were pieces in these neglected notebooks that when put together made up some kind of answer. She didn't think she could catch anything Hange had missed, but there was that very small sliver of possibility. Besides, reading was something to do to pass the time and distract her from the thoughts she came up with if she let her mind wander for too long. Illogical thoughts about being worthless or not strong enough or inherently flawed; sometimes when they ran away with her there would be flashbacks or blackouts. Then she would tell Levi and he would give her whatever she wanted; the cane, hot candle wax, whatever she needed to feel centered again. Reading definitely lengthened the amount of time in between those sessions.

For now, Erna was absorbed in Hange's notes. The book that she held at an arm's length, as if she didn't want to look like she cared too much, was full of field notes from a long time ago when Hange had only begun to develop a scientific interest in titans. There were some theories in them that were later disproven by the scientist herself and it probably wasn't especially useful, but it was an interesting sort of time capsule. Erna reached the end and flipped it closed. For a few seconds she just lay there. The effort it took to decipher Hange's scribbles sometimes made her feel drowsy. When she stood up it was with a stretch and a yawn.

She felt that sixth sense feeling of being watched. She looked down and caught Armin looking at her with something like curiosity or nosiness, she couldn't tell before he bashfully looked away and faked interest in his book. She decided it was none of her business. She went and put the notebook back where she'd found it and after some searching she found a medical book she wanted to re-read. She'd gone through the whole thing cover to cover a few times, but she skipped anything about actually healing people and focused only on memorizing every nerve pathway, muscle, and tendon. Those things at least, were the same between humans and titans as far as she could tell from her own 'experiments.' So she tried to study them until they were permanently etched in her memory. Until they became so ingrained that no amount of panic or chaos could make her forget them.

Armin was in the same position she'd left him in, though notably on the same page of the same book. She placed her heavy medical book on the floor and laid down, opening to a random page past the first third of the book which was all medical jargon that she didn't need.

Armin and Erna never talked when they sat together like this. It just didn't seem necessary to Erna. Quiet was something they didn't often get to enjoy around here, especially without being alone, and it didn't seem appropriate to Erna to break Armin's concentration anyway. Deep down, she was also a little intimidated by Armin. He was too smart for her, she thought, and she was wary of starting a conversation with him alone. There was a lot more going on under the surface there than she could probably keep up with.

She watched him from under her eyelashes for a little bit. He kept staring at his book, but his eyes didn't slowly track from left to right the way they would if he were actually reading. It was very curious. He was behaving strangely today. It was worth risking conversation.

"What are you reading?"

He didn't startle or flinch, but he did seem flustsered. "Oh, um.." he hummed, "A book about different tactics and strategies. It's sort of a history book. Records of what has and hasn't worked in the past."

Erna didn't comment. She only hummed and looked back at her book, smirking a little to herself.

"What?"

He could tell she thought something was funny. She looked back up with a smile and teased, "It's just I heard Mike tell you yesterday that you should be writing down ideas, not reading them."

Which was true. The gist of what she'd heard Mike telling Armin was that he needed to have more faith in his own ideas and not be so shy about them. Something about how getting the boy to blurt out a plan or strategy outside of a catastrophic emergency was like pulling teeth from a horse, which Erna could only assume was very difficult. After hearing the analogy she'd devoted minutes to thinking about how one would do that.

"W-well… I …" he trailed off and she went back to her book. Silence settled back in, but now there was an uncomfortable tension. Erna couldn't just leave it be.

Without looking up from her page she asked, "Do you know that they talk about you in the Trainee Corps?" She mentally mapped out the muscles that would overlay the tendons in a diagram she was looking at. "Shadis teaches a whole section about you and how humanity as a whole would have been fucked if you hadn't come up with a plan to take back that overrun supply depot during the Battle of Trost…"

Armin looked down, his face turning bright red, he asked, "R-really?"

"Yeah. He names you specifically. Makes a big thing of how smart you are."

Armin muttered shyly, "It wasn't just me."

"But it was your idea."

"Well…" he couldn't say more than that. He couldn't deny it, but it was difficult for him to take the credit even if it was deserved. He brushed it off. "We were just lucky."

"If you say so."

Silence returned. Erna followed charts of blood vessels with her fingers. Next time she was cutting a titan she wanted to try severing where the femoral artery should be, see if it made any difference. She wondered how it was possible for a thing to move without blood. Maybe their blood was just so hot that it turned to steam before you could find proof of it. She could ask Hange, but she'd rather run some tests herself than talk to Hange. She was lost in thought when Armin spoke again.

"Do you mind if I ask you something?"

"Nope," Erna answered without taking her eyes off of her book. She waited for the question, finished her page, looked for the page with drawings of all the muscles in the leg. Still the question didn't come, so she looked up.

When he had her attention Armin pointed and asked, "How did you get that?"

For a moment she was confused because she thought he meant the book, but she took a second longer to look at where he was pointing. He meant the band of bruising around her upper arm. It had a twin on her other arm, they were symmetrical. That must have been what she'd caught him eyeing when she'd gotten up and stretched before.

"Rope," she answered matter of factly. She was used to strange looks when she wore anything more revealing than her uniform. If it was a good week, she had multiple bruises and they were obviously not the kind that usually came from training. She didn't care about the looks and didn't try to hide anything by wearing her uniform all the time. Today she wore soft grey leggings and a large, white v-neck tee made of thin material. Casual clothes were a small act of rebellion for her lately. If Erwin wasn't going to assign her to a squad and give her real work to do, then she wasn't going to dress like a real soldier. It was a little annoying that it obviously didn't bother him in the slightest, but she wouldn't admit that she kept doing it because the clothes were damn comfy. She pushed herself up from her laying down position and she mirrored the way Armin was sitting, put her book in her lap and found her spot again.

"Does it hurt?" Armin's tone was more curious than concerned.

Erna raised an eyebrow at him. That was kind of the point. She told him, "Only when I press on it," and honestly, sometimes she did.

There was an uncomfortable silence. She didn't return to her book, but kept her eyes on him in case he had more questions. He looked back at her with an unreadable expression. After a couple of seconds she looked down at the page again.

"Uh.. um.. how.."

Erna closed the book with a clap. Could he only find the courage to ask her questions when she wasn't looking at him? She knew what he was trying to ask.

"He tied my arms together behind me in a box tie and suspended me that way, and if you're about to ask me how that works, I'm only going to tell you that it involves a lot of meticulous care and some inappropriate use of the maneuver gear."

He smiled and silently laughed a little at that. Erna relaxed too and she told him, "Those are nothing anyway." She pulled up the hem of her tee a little and hooked a thumb into the waist of her leggings, pulling them down enough to show an angry black bruise on her hip. Armin's eyes widened, but he didn't look worried or judgmental, just impressed.

"How did that happen?"

"He kicked me."

"Why?"

"I asked him to." She let her tee fall back into place. "Actually had to beg him. He didn't want to do it."

"Why did you want him to?"

Armin's questions were so free from judgment, it was a little like he was making scientific observations trying to maintain objectivity so that his conclusions could be accurate and not tainted by bias. Still, they were difficult to answer. Erna wasn't very practiced in thinking about these things. His tone made her feel obligated to be as honest as possible, which kept her answers short.

"Because it feels really good."

"Is it always that extreme?"

She felt like he should be taking notes. "No… Only when I feel really shitty and worthless and have all these relentless negative thoughts. That's when I need to ask him to just really fuck me up. Then I feel better."

Erna didn't know if she should be this candid, but it was nice to talk frankly about it. It was cathartic in a way. She wasn't shy about the things she did, but she didn't talk about them often because she tried to be generally considerate of others and didn't want to traumatize anyone. She would only occasionally describe some of these things in detail if she was in a mood to make someone uncomfortable, but she never had a real conversation about it.

"Do you two discuss what's going to happen beforehand?"

That one was odd to her. Why would they? Did other people discuss anything before they started whatever foreplay they did or before they cuddled or whatever the equivalent to this would be?

"No… not really. I guess we do if I'm in a mood and want something specific."

"So you don't talk about limits?"

And Erna started to feel in over her head, this was the very reason she actively avoided personal conversations with Armin. He was always inscrutable and the rapidity of his thought process made her feel unable to keep up, unprepared and unable to hold her own. But she knew he didn't mean to make it feel that way, or at least she thought she knew, so she let him know, "You're going too fast for me."

Armin flushed a little, suddenly self-aware. "Sorry."

"It's okay." She looked upwards as she thought about the question. She still didn't get it. "What are 'limits' in this context?"

Armin was a lot more comfortable with asking the questions than answering them. He shifted uncomfortably. "Um… it's like… well…" He paused and took a deep breath. Instead of trying to answer her question, he rephrased his original question for her. "Do you have ever have conversations about what you like and what you definitely don't want to do?"

"… No?" Erna was starting to feel full of self-doubt. Should they be having those conversations? She raised an eyebrow at Armin, "You're full of questions."

Armin's face was red again. He looked down at the floor. "Oh.. I'm sorry… I won't –"

"No, it's okay," she reassured him. Sometimes interacting with Armin was so tentative and fragile it was like handling a baby bird. She tried to make her tone calm and gentle. "I'm just curious about why you're so interested."

His eyes stayed glued to the stone floor as he told her, "Well, I've always been, um, interested in the, um, practice of… of bdsm… and how people go about it safely… the technical aspects of it I mean…"

Ah. There it was. Erna felt better now that Armin was the one who was uncomfortable. "Like, for how long?" she asked.

"A pretty long time. There are books about it…" he trailed off, embarrassed at his own admission.

Erna helped him lie to ease the awkwardness, "So just scientific curiosity like with anything else?"

And Armin was so ready to embrace that lie. "Yes! It's very interesting."

"I can see that I guess." Erna rocked back, flattening her palms on the floor behind her and looked up at the ceiling. "Any other questions?"

Armin's eyes rolled upward in thought again, as if he were trying to remember something important. Erna wondered how long he had been holding back on these questions.

"Oh!" he exclaimed, "Do you use a safe word?"

Erna's forehead wrinkled in confusion.

"What's that?"

* * *

 

Levi and Hange sat at opposite ends of the large oak table in the "war room" of the Headquarters. Well, Hange actually hovered, standing with her hands splayed over the table's surface, eyes darting back and forth quickly checking her calculations against the parameters laid out already in the final draft of the Survey Corps approved proposal.

Levi scratched his pen angrily trying to intimidate the last bit of ink out of it. It was no use, it was dead. "Hanj, give me your pen."

She didn't look up. Her eyebrows knit together as she tried not to lose track of something in her head while she answered with a far away voice, "I'm using it."

Instead of accepting that answer and getting up to get another one, he stared at her in silence for a few seconds, watching her check back and forth between papers before snapping, "You're literally not using it, shithead. Toss it over here."

Without looking Hange threw her pen in his direction, missing by about four feet, the pen went sailing over past Levi's shoulder, hitting the blackboard behind him. He glared at her. She didn't even notice. As he got up from his chair to retrieve it, the door slammed open and suddenly there was Erna screaming at him, "Why the hell don't I have a safe word?!"

Levi froze in the middle of reaching for the pen on the ground. Hange still didn't look up nor did she seem to have heard. Erna crossed her arms over her chest angrily awaiting an answer. Levi stared at her expressionless for a moment. He picked Hange's pen up off of the floor, walked around the table, placed it near her, and let her know, "I'm taking a break."

Hange only murmured that she had heard him.

Levi walked out with Erna, closing the door behind them. He would have preferred to talk somewhere private, but his office was a long walk away.

"You need to stop appearing out of nowhere and screaming at me."

"Don't say it like it happens all the time," Erna grumbled.

"It  _feels_  like it happens all the time. You're lucky my heart's in such good condition." He leaned against the wall of the hallway. "Now what is this?"

She repeated the question, "Why don't I have a safe word?"

"Where is this coming from?"

"Just answer me!" She stomped her foot against the stone flooring.

Levi sighed. He rubbed his temples with his thumb and forefinger. "You do have a safe word."

"Nuh-uh." Erna was certain they'd never discussed safe words before. She didn't even know of the concept until Armin explained it to her. "What is it?" she challenged.

"Your safe word is 'no.' You can also use 'stop,' or 'don't.' They all work equally as well and are easy enough to get out in the moment."

"Oh…"

"So where did that come from?" She was too upset for Levi to think that it was just a random question. He was concerned about what caused such an outburst.

"It's nothing… Forget I said anything…" She blushed and looked down at her feet.

Levi frowned. "No, did something happen?" The nature of the whole question made him worry that something happened that damaged her trust in him. He worried that he did something wrong. The thought made him feel sick and dizzy like a punch to the gut. "Have we done anything you're not comfortable with?"

Erna flung herself at him, wrapping her arms around him in a tight hug and pressing her cheek hard against his shirt. "No, you're wonderful."

He was confused by the sudden change in attitude, but he went with it, because surprising behavior was normal with her, even if it was still disconcerting. He folded his hands over the small of her back and rested his chin on her head.

"I love you. I'm sorry for the random blow up," she murmured against his chest.

He sighed. "I never want you to feel unsafe." She nodded and he told her, "You can have whatever safe words you want. I'll always respect them." He pulled her closer. "Even if you choose something stupid like 'wings of freedom.'"

"'Stop' is good."

Even though she seemed calm and okay now, Levi was worried about what was behind this in the first place. Erna had been asking for some intense play lately. Sometimes she wanted things that he wasn't even entirely comfortable with. He couldn't help wondering if this was because he'd gone too far any of those times. He'd thought it was all cathartic for her because she always seemed happy and content for days afterwards. Now he doubted himself and a nauseous feeling came over him as he wondered if he wasn't being responsible enough to be charged with her vulnerability. He knew he wouldn't be able to get past this until he knew if it was because of something he did.

He cupped her face in his hands and asked, "Hey, what brought this on?"

"It's stupid." She wouldn't meet his eyes.

"Tch. Let me decide if  _I_  think it's stupid too then."

She groaned. Her face started to turn red and she hid her face against his chest again, she let loose a flood of rapid thoughts, "I was just talking to Armin about stuff and he was asking me a lot of questions and he had to explain to me what a safe word is and it made me feel like I should have one and it's embarrassing that he knows a lot more about this stuff than I do and I'm the one doing it and…" She sighed deeply to catch her breath.

He could not have been more relieved. A smirk barely appeared around the corners of his lips. "You're right, it is stupid."

"Shut up."

"I'm teasing you. You're fucking cute when you're embarrassed."

"Don't call me cute," she warned.

"Look at me."

She lifted her head reluctantly and he held her eyes as he said, "Safe words are important, it's not stupid. There are a few different ways to use them. Usually they're for people who want to actually be able to say 'no,' or 'stop' without actually stopping play or for whom the word 'no' is too emotionally charged to get it out of their mouths easily." As he talked, her face looked more and more confused, so he asked, "Make sense?"

Her brow wrinkled in concentration. It was fucking cute, but he wouldn't tell her so. She tried hard to understand. "Why would you say 'stop' if you didn't want to stop?"

Fuck that innocent look, it went straight to his heart and dick at the same time. He wanted to help her figure it out, because he knew how hard it was for her to let a thing go until she understood it, but as unashamed and kink positive and sexually libertine as he was, he would never find a way to be comfortable talking about rape play with her. He wasn't even comfortable with thinking about it.

"Ask Arlert to explain it to you, the pervy little shit."

He thought she would protest and whine at him, but instead she brightened up.

"Oh, that's a good idea."

He wasn't sure if it really was.

"Wait. Look, we should have talked about this before now. It's my fault. I don't want you to feel bad about not knowing this stuff. We'll have a talk about everything later, okay?" That was as close to an apology as he was going to get. Though he felt apologetic, it took a lot more than this for him to utter the words 'I'm sorry.'

She smiled and nodded at him and he asked to make sure, "You're not upset anymore?"

"Not at all."

He sighed a little in relief. "And I can trust you to tell me to stop when you want me to?"

Her eyes twinkled and she smiled at him. "Of course." She took his hands and held them in front of her as if examining the details of his fingers. "It would only be fair to warn you and give you a chance to stop before I broke your fingers, wrists, and forearms."

She let go of his hands and they fell to his sides. She gave him a quick peck on the cheek and walked away quickly with a bounce in her step.

Levi shook his head, brought his palm to his face, and sighed.

* * *

 

Armin pushed open the door to his room and shut it quietly behind him. He was just coming back from the library, having left after Erna had stormed off. Normally he stayed in the library later than this, but his concentration was broken now with no hope of being reestablished.

There was a lock on the door, but he didn't use it even though he wanted privacy. A locked door would look suspicious to Jean if he came back unexpectedly. Armin checked the time. He probably had two hours. One hour if he was being cautious. He went over to the bed and lifted the mattress from the boxspring enough to feel around. He'd had the books under there for so long he knew them by feel maybe even better than by sight as keeping them hidden, secret and out of sight was a habit so deeply ingrained that it felt almost comforting like a ritual. Even if a time came where he no longer felt they needed to be hidden, he wasn't sure he would be able to break the habit after so many years. It felt good to have a secret all to himself.

His hand found the book he wanted and he pulled it out, let the mattress fall, and he slid it under the pillow, not wanting it out in the open even for the few seconds it took him to go pick up an astronomy book off of the desk on the other side of the room. He never did this without a decoy book. This way, if he heard the turn of the doorknob, he could hide one book under the other quickly and it looked like he was lying in bed studying star charts instead of a book about self-bondage, or a collection of essays about the deep trust and love involved in submission, or just pure shameless bdsm smut stories.

Today it was a book on rope bondage. Erna's comment about the box tie and suspension rekindled his interest. This book was a lot more instructional than erotic, with step by step diagrams of how to do different knots and chapters about safety and how to properly maintain different kinds of rope. Armin nestled into bed and retrieved it from under the pillow.

He had been turned on by the idea of dominance and submission for as long as he could remember. From however long ago it was that he started to have any sexual feelings at all, they had always revolved around the erotic feeling of being powerless and at another's mercy. In his fantasies, he was always held down, treated roughly, bound or humiliated at the hands of an imaginary someone who didn't care for him as a person but only as a sexual object, someone cruel who only saw him as a willing victim to focus all of their lust and thirst for violence on. But by way of observance, he learned early on that it wasn't that way for everyone. Most people – average, normal people – never gave any thought to combining power exchange with sex and love. For the longest time he'd thought he was entirely alone, a freak, that there was something wrong with him. It wasn't until he was twelve and he chanced upon a book about bondage and dominant/submissive protocol at an estate sale that he learned he still wasn't "normal," but at least there were enough abnormal people out there that there were books about this stuff. Finding that book hiding among piles of other books on common and mundane topics was one of the biggest strokes of luck of his whole life, and he considered himself a very lucky person. He didn't have that book under his mattress now. He'd given it up, along with some others he'd found, when he had to move into the training camp barracks. But he could still remember it from cover to cover. He could probably recite it.

He only started this new collection after joining the Survey Corps, where they were safe from random room inspections. Still, he kept them hidden along with continuing to hide this entire facet of his personality from everyone, even Jean, which made it feel wrong and shameful and therefore even better and kinkier. Since they'd begun sharing the room, Armin often fantasized about Jean finding out about his secret collection and punishing him for it, humiliating him for being a dirty little slut, a secretive, two-faced, cock-hungry whore for punishment. As he paged through the book he imagined Jean tying him up so that he couldn't move and humiliating him, a cocky evil smirk on his beautiful face as he teased him. Armin groaned a little and rolled his hips against the mattress. He thought about Jean being disgusted by him and saying horrible, degrading things to him as he treated him like a common whore. He panted quietly, lifted his hips a little, and reached down.

His fantasy was broken by the turn of the doorknob. Quicker than a shot, Armin's hips fell to the bed, his hands flew up, and he covered the rope bondage book with the big astronomy book. Even though it was his default, go-to fantasy, he wasn't ready to actually get caught yet. He rested his chin on his folded hands and focused on the words on the page in front of him just as Jean stepped in.

"Hey babe," Jean greeted him sweetly as he came in and took off his jacket, when he noticed Armin in bed, he fretted, "Sorry, were you taking a nap?"

It was bad enough to be interrupted in the middle of a masturbatory fantasy, but did Jean have to be so sweet and loving and the exact opposite of the way Armin imagined him when he was trying to get off? He made his voice far away and absent as if he was lost in his book when he answered, "No, just reading." He stretched his arms and shoulders as if he'd been reading for a long time and could use a break. He turned and smiled innocently at Jean, feeling fake and deceptive for how well he always pulled off that expression, he asked sweetly, "How was training with your team?" He didn't ask why he was back early. He pretended that he didn't notice that.

Jean smiled and looked so proud, his shoulders pitched back and his chin came up just slightly. He started to talk about what progress he was making with the soldiers in his team, but his speech was cut short by a bang and a thud as the door was pushed open quickly behind him. The door knob hit him square in the lower back and he stumbled forward with a hiss of pain.

"The fuck were you standing there for?" Erna stood in the door frame with her arms crossed and raised an eyebrow at Jean.

"Fuck." Jean rubbed his back. "Civilized people knock before barging into someone's room, you know."

"Sorry," Erna said, completely sarcastically, still thinking that Jean was at fault for being in her way.

"I think you bruised my kidney…"

"Anyway, get out," Erna stepped into the room to make space in the doorway for Jean to leave.

Jean gave her a look of disbelief. "This is my room. You get out."

"It's Armin's room," Erna corrected him, "And you need to leave because girl talk."

Any shred of arousal Armin had been desperately trying to cling to dissipated as Erna and Jean stared each other down. He sat up in the bed and sighed, "It's okay, Jean. Can we have the room for a bit? I'll catch up with you at dinner later."

Jean scowled at Erna, but he would never argue with Armin. He put his jacket back on indignantly. Erna watched him with a smug triumphant smirk and kicked the door closed after him.

Erna never asked to speak privately with Armin like this. He could only assume that she wanted to continue their conversation from earlier. She stood in the center of the small room in what he felt was awkward silence for a few seconds. He began to ask what was the matter, but Erna brought a finger to her lips and shushed him. She was listening. After another second she turned back to the door and opened it abruptly again. She caught Jean standing in the hallway trying to listen. This set off another spat of bickering between the two of them. Armin rolled his eyes. They were both so stubborn and short-tempered. He stood up and spoke over both of them, "Jean, you can trust me, we're not talking about anything concerning you."

"I trust you, I just don't trust her."

"Trust that your ugly face is going to get fucked up if you don't march your ass down that hallway right now," Erna stared at Jean in that emotionless, straight-faced way she did when she was truly about to do something violent.

Before Jean could say or do anything that would provoke her, Armin interjected, "It's really okay, Jean, I promise. It's nothing."

"Yeah, trust your boyfriend," Erna scolded mockingly.

Jean narrowed his eyes at her. He backed out of the doorway, but unable to walk away without the last word, he told Erna, "You're so fucking rude."

Satisfied that he was really gone this time, Erna closed the door again, muttering to herself about how impossible it was to imagine how Armin put up with his boyfriend. Armin didn't bother defending him. He loved Jean madly, but he knew it would be pointless to try to explain and make Erna understand.

Armin motioned at the only chair in the room, indicating that Erna could sit down if she wanted to. "Please do knock next time though..." He smiled at her so that she wouldn't take his words as being too aggressive.

"Sorry, I was lost in thought." She wasn't sarcastic and snippy with him the way she would have been with Jean had he said the same thing.

Armin resumed his seat on the bed. "Everything okay?"

Instead of taking the chair, Erna flopped down next to him on the bed, not shy about the invasion of personal space at all. "Yeah. I just have more questions."

"Well I –" Armin was about to explain that he might not have all the best answers and suggest that she might be better off asking Levi anyway, since, ya know, he obviously had experience and they were in a relationship and she should probably communicate with him instead of breaking into Armin's room like she owned the place, but she cut him off and just started asking her first question.

"So Levi said that instead of a safe word I could just tell him to stop if I wanted him to, and that makes sense, but then why have safe words at all?"

Armin swallowed. His mouth opened slightly, but no words came out. He didn't really know what to say. When he'd started interrogating Erna in the library, he hadn't anticipated that she would have questions for him. He was so much less comfortable answering questions than asking them, because having answers showed that he knew a lot about these things. As he tried to put together a proper explanation, she kept talking.

"Levi said that some people want to be able to say 'no' or 'stop' without actually stopping and I don't get that. He wouldn't explain it. He's super busy right now. But he said to ask you about it."

"Oh god, you told him?" All of Armin's breath left him. His face felt like it would burn up.

"Well yeah. He wanted to know what made me all pissed off about safe words." Erna said obviously. The concept of shame was lost on her.

Armin groaned. He would never be able to look the Captain in the eye again. He brought his knees up to his chest and felt like he could die of embarrassment.

Erna barely registered his very obvious emotional distress. "Don't worry, it's not like he cares." Not helpful. Armin cringed. Erna looked down at her hands, self-conscious about having done something wrong. It was always clear to Armin in many small ways that she felt she didn't understand how to fit in and interact with normal people the way she was supposed to and Armin was very sympathetic to that. Especially when, after some moments of silence, she murmured, "I'm sorry…"

He forgot about his embarrassment and gave her a smile. That was a habit. He'd always put others happiness before his own and was a master of putting on an expression that made people feel better even when he wasn't happy. "It's okay," he told her, "You're right. Of all people, I believe that Levi really wouldn't care. But don't let anyone else know that I'm interested in this stuff, okay?"

Erna's attitude turned from apologetic to offended. She narrowed her eyes at him. "It's almost insulting when you put it like that, ya know."

"Oh! I didn't mean it that way! I'm –" Armin went on the defensive. He would always be at least a little fearful of Erna even though she was probably nicer to him than she was to anyone else. Her mercurial moods made it difficult to ever feel really at ease with her.

"It's fine," she said, "I'm used to it." She let it go easily and steered him back to her original reason for coming here. "Are you going to answer my question or not?"

"Um…" He tried to remember exactly what it had been.

"Levi said that people pick strange safe words when they want to be able to say 'no' or 'stop' without actually stopping."

"Right," Armin confirmed. He didn't see where the question was in that.

Erna was getting frustrated that this concept didn't seem to be confusing to anyone but her. "But why?"

"Oh.. um.." Armin was starting to see where her confusion was. He started off from the obvious beginning, so that she hopefully wouldn't stop him to ask more embarrassing questions. "Um, well, first off, everyone goes about this stuff differently according to what they like… And as long as it's between consenting partners and everyone is aware of the risks, there isn't any real right or wrong way to do bdsm… and, um, there are just a lot of different ways to…" His face was turning red again.

"Get to the point."

"Sorry. Um. To answer your question, I guess it's because some people like to say 'no' or 'stop' during a scene because they like to have the illusion of being abused and taken forcibly?" He ended that with an upward inflection like it was a question because he was nervous. But it wasn't a question. He knew this from various sources; enough so that he felt pretty sure it was common practice and he was a little surprised when he'd asked Erna about it in the library and she hadn't any idea what he'd been talking about.

Erna stared at him dead-eyed. She repeated that last word emphatically. "Forcibly."

Gods she made Armin feel so wrong. "Well, not in all cases, but I think in the context that you're asking about… um…"

"Like rape," she said bluntly.

Armin cringed at the way she said it. He tried to explain quickly, "People call it 'consensual non-consent' and it's a way of roleplaying, um, and –"

"Nope, it's okay, I got it." Erna crossed her arms over her chest and tucked her knees up. Her face looked brooding and unhappy. Her eyebrows knit together, she was probably trying to figure out where the appeal was, because she was obviously not okay with the idea.

"There are people who like to give up their power to someone else freely and willingly and there are people who like to have the illusion of it being taken from them," Armin said softly, "One way isn't better than another, it's just different. People are all very different, especially when it comes to something as personal as sex." He hoped this was making her feel less upset.

She seemed to snap out of her brooding contemplation. "I don't get it, but it's okay."

And this was why Armin had wanted to ask Erna so many questions in the first place. For once, he had a real life example of a bdsm practicing couple, but he still knew so little about what they actually did. Erna would drop revelations about canes or riding crops whenever she wanted to shock someone, but there was never any hint as to what kind of power dynamic was there. There were so many things that they didn't talk about, and that was the stuff he felt the most curious over. It wasn't a prurient, perverted desire to hear graphic stories about real people having sex, (if he wanted that, he could read something pornographic or come up with some really good stuff with his own imagination) but it was a need to know how real people made this work in real life. Were there rules? Were there special considerations that he never would have thought of? Logistically how did it work? What was the emotional side of it?

It was just so damn hard to ask the questions. "So.. you and Levi don't…"

"Nah. Nothing rapey."

And Erna's bluntness and strangely naïve innocence about everything made it so much harder. Armin cringed at the new adjective she just made up. At least she was sitting next to him on the bed and not across from him in the chair. Sitting side by side they didn't have to look at each other. It made it relatively easier to talk.

Erna shifted her position and leaned against the wall that the bed was pushed up against. "I guess we like to feel like we're pretty equal. We don't pretend like he's breaking me or whatever." She reached past Armin and grabbed a pillow to put behind her neck. "I think he likes to know that I could fuck him up if I wanted to. Like that makes it mean more when I let him be in control." She paused and thought some more. "But there's never any illusion that he could force me to do anything I didn't want to. I think that would be depressing."

Armin had so many questions about that, but he struggled to frame them in a way she would understand. Erna didn't have the vocabulary for this that he did. He tried to find the right way to ask if she would describe herself as a submissive or as strictly masochistic, but he would probably need to explain the difference and then there was the grey area in between. It was like they spoke different languages. While Armin had a lot of knowledge, he had no experience, and Erna had no knowledge except what came from her personal experience. He would have to rein himself in and stick to less complicated questions until they started to share a more similar foundation of knowledge.

Armin tried to think of a good, basic question that would maybe elicit an illuminating answer, but Erna broke the silence and derailed his train of thought with her own question. "What's roleplaying?"

"Huh?" He'd absolutely heard her. He was just stalling for time to come up with an answer that wouldn't feel so uncomfortable.

"You said the consensual non-consent stuff was a way of roleplaying…"

"It's, um, it's like… pretending to be something you're not…"

She raised an eyebrow at him like 'why would anyone do that?' but she didn't press him for more of an explanation. She sighed. "Talking with you about this is more awkward and educational than I thought it would be."

Armin was glad at least one of them could admit it.

"So what are you into?" She asked, with no segue or subtlety at all.

"Oh, I- I'm not.. um…"

"Armin." Erna's tone was very serious, "Don't try to lie to me. You know  _too much_  about this stuff for it to be just scientific curiosity. I'm not dumb." Erna crossed her arms over her chest and waited for an answer.

"I know you're not. I'm sorry. Um, I guess I don't know if I'm into any of it? I've never tried anything…"

Erna's eyelids lowered halfway and she gave him a tired look. "That is the lamest answer ever."

He shrugged. That was the best he could do.

Erna briefly rolled her eyes. "Do people need to have tried sex to be able to have urges and fantasize about it?"

"I- I guess you have a point?" he conceded, but she gave him a look like that wasn't good enough. She wanted real answers, but his mouth went dry and wouldn't let out another word. Stuff like this was why he would never feel truly comfortable and at ease with her. One minute she was being naïve and innocently asking him for answers to her questions and the next minute she was eyeing him like a cat with a mouse.

She waited a little longer to give him an opportunity to continue and give her a more satisfactory answer to her question about what he liked about bdsm, but it was obvious that he wouldn't, so she asked, "If I told you exactly what I'm into would that make it easier?" Her voice was lowered. Not exactly like she was trying to be seductive, it was more predatory but calm, like she was trying not to scare the mouse off before she could pounce.

Armin unconsciously leaned back and away from her a little, putting his weight down onto his hand now near his pillow and the book. He flinched the slightest bit when his shifting weight on the bed made the astronomy book slide just an inch. He kept his wide eyes on her. He thought he saw her penetrating grey eyes flick down and behind him for a fraction of a second, but it was so slight it was probably his imagination, because right now she was very intently focused on him. He swallowed.

"Probably not," she mused, answering her own question since he clearly wouldn't.

Erna looked away from him, and Armin quietly exhaled the breath he had been holding. She slunk to the edge of the bed again and her eyes wandered around the room as she spoke. "I might be new to a lot of things and I'm pretty naïve." She stood up and rocked on the balls of her feet, stretching her shoulders back and lacing her fingers together behind her. "And you're definitely a lot smarter than me." She sighed deeply, stretching up onto her toes and bringing her arms over her head. "But it's annoying when you think that you can lie or hide things from me. I might not know a lot of things, but I am very observant and I can certainly read people."

Armin stammered, "I wasn't.. I um.." but he stopped trying to talk when she turned around, letting her arms fall to her sides again and staring at him in that severe way. He was doing it again. He shut his mouth tight and her eyes changed. A hint of an impish smile flickered across her face.

"Here's what I think," she began, "just based on my own experience." She turned away from him again and seemed to survey the room. "I could be completely off base with this, but you blush an awful lot and you deny and act all overly humble whenever anyone praises you. You get really uncomfortable whenever anyone points out that you're good at what you do or smart or whatever."

Armin was half listening to her and half watching and worrying. She casually stepped around the room as if she was looking for something. Her eyes seemed to scan over the desk against the wall as she continued, "And I think that somehow you don't see yourself that way or you just don't like the praise." Her eyes fixed on something indefinite and she sounded far away as she said, "It just doesn't do anything for you."

She looked in his direction, but not at him. He noticed her looking at the bed. Her eyes moved, looking under it, around it, scanning. "And I think," she continued, "that you're probably at least a little into verbal humiliation. I don't know about the pain or bondage, but I could definitely picture you getting off on being told all of the horrible things that in some way you think are true."

Her eyes stopped looking around and returned to his face, which he thought probably looked pretty shocked and horrified by now. She smiled a wicked little smile and stepped closer to him. "And I think that instead of telling you how perfect and cute you are, you'd like it better if Jean told you that you're an awful, dirty, depraved, perverted, worthless little cock slut who is intrinsically bad and twisted inside and that you don't even deserve to lick his boots."

Armin's lips parted a little. His cock got harder with every word and as she stared at him like he was cornered he felt it twitch against the tight pants of his uniform. He couldn't help it. He squirmed a little and hummed as Erna loomed over him.

"That's very interesting," she said, with a fiery glint of mischief in her eyes. And just as suddenly as it had come on, her dark, slinking, predatory demeanor was gone, replaced by the naively innocent expression she'd first walked in with and she flopped down next to him on the bed again.

Flippantly she said, "And I think that on some level you must want to get caught if this is how careful you're being." She pulled the rope bondage book out from underneath the big astronomy book and held it up. "It's obvious you're hiding more under the mattress."

Armin stammered, truly speechless.

"So," she said curtly, "you're not going to try to hide things from me and we're going to be able to have sincere, honest conversations, right?"

That's what all of that was for. This was how she punished him for unintentionally insulting her. His pulse was still racing. If this was the consequence, he would never give her a half-truth answer again. His cock throbbed again and he wished she wasn't sitting between him and the pillow at the headboard because he desperately wanted to grab it and cover himself. "Um, right, I'm sorry."

As she stood up again he grabbed the pillow. She held the book up again and asked, "Can I borrow this?"

"You can keep it," Armin answered breathlessly. Right now he didn't feel like he'd ever need it.

Erna smirked a little at the state he was in. Then she said, being genuinely friendly, "Don't worry about it, I get off on a little humiliation too. Probably not as much as you do, but still."

That did actually make him feel better, surprisingly. He smiled.

Erna looked down and said shyly, "Thanks for being a good sport and answering my question. It was actually really helpful."

"I'm glad." Armin's answers were uncharacteristically short and sweet and would continue to be until he could do something about his persistent erection. He hated himself for it, but he wanted to take care of it with Erna's words fresh in his head.

"Can I pick your brain some more tomorrow?"

"Uh huh." Armin shifted his weight, squirming uncomfortably.

Erna made her way over to the door. "Okay, I'll let you take care of that," she said casually, as if it were a completely normal and not awkward at all thing to excuse yourself so that your friend could jerk off. She slipped out the door and closed it behind her.

Armin groaned and got up. Thoroughly embarrassed and aching to put that humiliation to use in a mind-blowing, emotionally charged, self-loathing orgasm, but he had to lock the door first.

* * *

 

Levi left the war room early, feeling bad about leaving before Hange for only a split second. He always left earlier than her. If he didn't see her at dinner every night, he would think that she ate and slept over her papers. She never even noticed or commented when he left, but he could never help feeling a twinge of guilt. He didn't like anyone working harder than him.

He almost sidetracked himself, wanting to go check on his squad and make sure they were actually training hard and not being the half-assed slackers that he suspected they were whenever he wasn't glaring at them, but he shook his head. That was just avoidance. He'd left Mikasa in charge, the only one of them with any self-discipline, and she sure as fuck wasn't letting anyone slack off. He was just looking for ways to delay talking to Erna because open and honest communication was not his strong suit.

He fought the urge to procrastinate on this and quickly made his way to the apartment. Better to rip the bandage off. When he opened the door, she was already there in the living room, sitting on the floor, leaned against the couch, and reading a book. Before he even had the door fully closed behind him, she was turning the book around to hold it up so he could see and saying, "I want to try this."

He squinted. He couldn't see what she was talking about from where he was. "Can I take my fucking boots off?" She didn't respond to the rhetorical question, but she waited as he kicked his boots off and left them at the door, muttering, "Over eager, manic brat…"

He walked over and took the book out of her hands. It was opened to a page with an illustration of a woman in a complicated and incredibly restrictive shibari tie called an  _'ebi'_  which involved tying the ankles so that they crossed together, tying the arms together behind the back, and then looping rope around the neck to pull the head all the way down to the ankles. It effectively folded a person in half and it was incredibly painful if held for any significant amount of time. Not to mention that it compressed the diaphragm and could cut off a person's oxygen and make them pass out. He closed the book and pinched the bridge of his nose. This girl was going to be the death of him someday.

"First of all…" He paused and thought about which concern he should actually address first. "Where did you even get this? Second, I don't have enough rope for this. And third, even if I did have enough I wouldn't feel confident doing this, you psycho rope bunny."

Her shoulders slumped and she pouted while letting out a little "hmph."

He closed the book and placed it on the coffee table before he sat on the couch. Quietly he acquiesced, "Maybe we'll get some more rope and try it eventually. I'm not promising anything." Erna perked up a little at that. She turned a little, shifted onto one hip, and laid her head on his lap. He let his head fall back and he rubbed his temples.

The action was not lost on her. "Do you have a headache? Want me to get you some tea?"

"Yes, and no," he answered. He left it at that while he tried to think of how he wanted to start this.

"I got the book from Armin," she finally answered his first question.

That made sense. He was pretty fucking sure it hadn't come from the library. And of course it would be Arlert. It was always the quiet, sweet ones who had the darkest, most perverted secrets. He ran his fingers through her hair and asked, "You went back and asked him about safe words?"

"Yeah. I learned about consensual nonconsent," her tongue slowly got the term out without tripping over it, "and it's disturbing and we're never doing it."

"My feeling exactly." Levi pulled her up onto the couch and she melted onto him, snuggling into the crook of his neck and laying over him bonelessly. It was important to him that she liked everything they did together. The thought of even pretending to force himself on her made him physically ill. He needed a minute to just sit there with his arms around her before he began what was probably going to end up being a long lecture.

He started with some more on what she had been so anxious about earlier. "There are other ways to use safe words. Some people use them to describe degrees of discomfort. Usually a color system. It's a way of being able to check in easily. I never thought to bring that up with you because you're so expressive with your face and your whole body, the way you feel about things is always obvious, but we can do that if you want."

Erna was quiet for a minute. There was silence while she seemed to be thinking hard and it was steadily making Levi feel more uneasy. Eventually she sensed his disquiet, and seemed to suddenly remember that he was waiting for an answer when she finally spoke up. "Oh. I think we're fine. I like the way things are." She brought a finger to her lips as she thought some more. "I just didn't know people had to do so much to be careful."

"This stuff can be dangerous."

"Well you're either really good at it or you're really lucky," she teased.

"Tch. I'm really good at this, brat." He pinched her side. "You're the one that's really lucky."

She hummed lazily and stretched her legs out across the couch. His fingers carded through her hair. Even though she'd already assured him that she could speak up and tell him when she had an issue with something, he had to ask, "Is there anything at all that you haven't enjoyed? Really think about it." He wasn't trying to show it, but her outburst earlier had shaken him and for hours he had gotten very little work done as he questioned nearly all of his decisions.

She didn't take any time to think about it. Her eyes were closed and she was enjoying the sensation of his fingers pulling through her hair. She mumbled, "I'd have told you long before now."

He just needed to be sure. Before he could ask anything else, she continued, "And don't ever ask me again. I'm as equally willing a partner in this as you are and I don't like it when you act worried about taking advantage of me or whatever."

He smirked. "Then don't bust down doors and scream at me as if I have taken advantage of you."

"Fair enough."

"Is there anything else you want to talk about?"

She hummed and thought, before answering, "I really liked that one time you almost slit my throat with your razor. Can we do that again?"

He'd forgotten about that, but it was easily remembered once she mentioned it. He felt his cock twitch as he recalled the wide-eyed look she got when he went far enough to provoke a little fear in her. He shook his head, tried not to get distracted. "I'll take that into account, but I meant anything you sincerely want to ask me now that I'm taking the trouble to be vulnerable with you, and you know that. Don't be a smart assed brat."

"Talking about this stuff makes me horny," she whined.

"A slight breeze makes you horny. Be serious."

She huffed and slumped her shoulders a little. There was silence for a while and he waited. A couple of minutes went by in tense silence until he prodded her, "Come on. Out with it."

She made a whining sound before opening up her mouth and saying, "It's dumb, and I'm trying to make sure I'm going to get it out right."

"Tch. Don't worry so much about being perfectly accurate. The more you stall the harder you make it." He pulled her up into his lap and brushed the hair away from her eyes when he told her, "Look at me."

She cheated and looked at his chin instead of into his eyes. He could tell, but he didn't correct her. He waited and eventually she blurted out, "We don't sit together at meals."

He tried not to react, because she was right, that was dumb and ridiculous and he could tell there was more than that. He waited and after a second of silence, she continued, "And it doesn't matter because it doesn't change anything, but I don't know a lot about you, and I really don't care about that because I don't need to know anything, but…" She bit her lip. He kept his face blank. If she did hazard a look into his eyes, he didn't want her to see any kind of expression that would make her feel judged. She went on, "It's just, no one picks on me about it or anything, but they think it's strange that I don't eat with you and … Jean and Armin and Sasha and Connie know like literally everything about each other and…" She looked like she was going to cry, but she held it together and simply pouted, "They're stupid and gross and I hate them."

She crossed her arms over her chest and looked down. He felt pretty sure she was done, so he said, "None of that is dumb. This is normal stuff." He paused, then corrected himself, "Well, some of it is dumb, but it's not you being dumb. We don't sit together at meals because we have different social circles. I don't want to sit with those shitty brats that I have no fucking patience for and I'll assume you don't want to sit with me and Hange and Mike." Erna shook her head emphatically no like the idea horrified her and he told her, "That's normal couple stuff. Sometimes people have different groups of friends and they don't have to like each other's friends or suffer their presence. So don't worry about that."

That part was out of the way. He struggled with the second half. He sighed and raked his fingers through his own hair. Erna adjusted herself in his lap so that she was straddling his legs and facing him. She sympathetically draped her arms over his neck. He looked her in the eye, as much as she would allow, and told her, "I don't know a lot about your past, and I'm fine with that. I understand that shit is hard to talk about and most of the time you don't even want to think about it. I'm in the same boat with you, but I do know more about you than you do about me, so I'll tell you enough to make us even."

Erna nodded slightly. "Fair."

He took a deep breath. He had literally never said any of this out loud to anyone. He tried to state the facts with as little detail as possible so as to not think about it too much. "I never knew my father, I watched my mother die in front of me when I was a kid, and I was taken in by a cold, vicious killer until I could properly defend myself and survive in the slums, then he abandoned me." Erna was staring straight at him now, her face as blank and expressionless as his had probably been earlier. "Ah, shit. This is hard." He took a deep breath. "My only friends were eaten by titans after we joined the Survey Corps. I probably could have saved them, but I wasn't there."

"That's enough." Erna put her fingers over his lips. "If you tell me more than that, then I'll have to tell you more to make us even again."

There was a beautiful sorrow to her voice. When he looked into her eyes there was no pity there, only a grief over how harsh and cruel life is. She removed her fingers from his lips and, in a way, he loved the harshness and cruelties of the world because it made the beautiful parts of it, like her, feel heartbreakingly beautiful.

"You never have to tell me anything, Erna." He put his hands around her waist.

She kissed him, suddenly, like she was surprised she was doing it at first, but it turned into a long, slow kiss. A swelling feeling grew in Levi's chest as he lost himself in it. He didn't push away or try to forget all of the sorrow in his life, but he integrated it into his being, he used it to remind himself that there is just as much beauty in living as there is pain, and he felt all of it.

Minutes later, Erna pulled back, looking at him with wet, bruised lips. Catharsis was good sometimes, but it needed to be short. She was done with so much feeling. So he teased her, "You know what gets me off and you know how I like my tea and that's a hell of a lot more than anyone else knows, so don't worry about it."

She smiled at him. "I still don't know how old you are."

He smirked. He could tell her, but he liked making her guess at that. "Do you know how old you are?"

She frowned. Her file said that she was 19, with her birthday being January 1st. That date was the birthday the military assigned people who had no proof of their birth date and Levi knew that. "Not really. I don't have a birth certificate or anything and never celebrated any birthdays. They only guessed at my age when I entered training."

He wouldn't be surprised if she was older than they thought. "I'll tell you my age when you get some proof of your own."

"But that'll never happen," she whined playfully and tugged at the collar of his jacket.

"Exactly."


	24. Secrets

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Feels.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I switch to the present tense for this chapter because I started another story that I'm writing in the present tense and it's hard to get my brain to go back and forth. So I'll probably just be sticking with this.

Erna is going to kill Mikasa if she doesn't die first.

"Five more. Stop leaning forward." The dark-haired beauty says as calm as could be. As if Erna isn't shaking and sweating and about to collapse.

"Fuck… You…" Who ever even heard of one-legged pistol squats? What kind of monster would come up with such torture?

"Straighten your back."

Erna wonders what it would be like to be one of those people who don't have an automatic urge to please and do what they're told by anyone with an authoritative voice. That must be nice. She stretches up with her shoulders and redistributes her weight so that her leg is working even harder. She counts, 1… 2… and it's over and she's on her side in the dirt breathing harder than she ever has in her life, cursing at Mikasa with every exhale.

"You wanted this," Mikasa reminds her evenly.

Asking to tag along with Mikasa while she worked out hadn't seemed like such a bad idea when Erna asked that morning. She should have known from the look that Eren gave her. This was her worst, most self-destructive idea ever. Fuck all of this. Tomorrow she is going back to solo-killing titans.

"Get up. Same thing, other leg."

"I think I'm going to vomit," Erna responds. It's not an excuse, just a fact. She pushes herself up to her knees, then onto her feet, and she keeps going.

She needs to do a couple of quick heel-touches to the ground to keep herself from falling. Mikasa is right. She leans forward too much so that she can relieve the strain on her leg, but it also makes it harder to balance.

Mikasa promised this was the last thing after they did chin-ups and straight-leg sit ups and lunges and bear crawls and a million other things that Erna hadn't touched since the Training Corps. Using the 3DMG is its own workout. It's insane to do anything more when no one is forcing you to.

Mikasa does this every day. In fact she normally does more, but today Erna is slowing her down. But she thinks to herself that it's nice to not be alone. When Erna finishes with her set she tells her, "One last thing."

Erna looks dazed and Mikasa isn't sure if she heard because she doesn't say anything back. Instead she takes her shirt off and uses it to wipe the sweat from her face, neck, and chest. Her bangs are wet and plastered to her forehead. She stands up and walks in a little circle, lifting her legs high to try to stretch them out, t-shirt balled in a fist as she tries to catch her breath. When her chest is only heaving at a slightly alarming rate rather than an 'I'm having a heart attack' sort of pace, she finally asks, "What last thing?"

"Do you want to put your shirt back on first?"

Erna waves her shirt out of the ball she bunched it into and holds it in front of her by her fingertips. She crinkles her nose at how wet with sweat it is. "Nah, I'm good."

Mikasa shrugs. It's not like she is shy about working out in her sports bra, but Erna is wearing a lacy white bra that doesn't cover as much.

She points at an old, beat up horse cart behind one of the stables that clearly hasn't been used in a long time. "Last thing is to push that at least 60 meters."

Erna is still breathing hard and her exhale comes out as something like a sighing, groaning whimper.

"You can do it."

Again, Erna makes pitiful noises.

"You'll feel better after you do."

Erna nods. "This is the last thing for real?"

"For real."

"Can I watch you do it first?"

"You should go first while your heart rate is up. It's going to take me longer than you."

Erna kind of laughs in between breaths. "I don't see how that's possible."

"Because I'm pushing it 60 meters and pulling it back, seven times."

Erna doesn't have the ability anymore to sound or act surprised even though she truly doesn't understand how anything Mikasa just said is possible. As they start walking over, she asks, "You do this every day?"

"Different exercises every day, but yes."

That baffles Erna. She can't even imagine what it would be like to be that motivated. "Don't you ever just like wake up and think it would be nice to take a break?"

"No."

"So you never have to give yourself a pep talk and convince yourself to get up and go do this?"

"Never."

They stop in front of the back end of the cart. Erna decides not to freak herself out with wondering how many kilos it must weigh. She puts her hands on her head and thinks, 'Shit, just when I was starting to get my breath back.' Mikasa crosses her arms and waits expectantly.

Erna laughs a little and says, "Fuck me. I was hoping that walk would be longer."

"Talk less and get it over with."

After wiping the sweat from her hands on her white pants she places her palms on the wood. She takes a second to find a good hand-hold.

"Go."

She locks her arms and pushes straight, thighs and calves straining to get some momentum going. At ten meters she thinks her heart is going to explode, but her legs can keep moving, so she ignores the heart. She ignores every self-preserving thought that says 'no, stop it, can't,' because Mikasa said that she could do it and that's proof enough for her that she is not actually going to have an aneurism and die no matter how she feels. She trusts that Mikasa would stop her if she were about to actually die.

At about thirty meters every breath is a pained sigh and a gasp. Nothing gets easier, her legs just keep getting weaker, but she can't stop because if she stops she'll fall.

It never occurs to her to just quit and say she can't finish, even though she does literally think she'll never finish. She'd rather kill herself doing this than disappoint Mikasa, who never says a thing until, "Stop. You're done."

Erna hits the kill switch and falls to the grass, hyperventilating for air, between gasps asking, "I.. did.. it?"

"You did it in two minutes and forty seconds." Mikasa's voice is completely neutral. She sets Erna's discarded sweaty shirt down on the grass beside her along with a canteen. "Stretch out and drink that."

"Let me just lay here."

Mikasa shrugs like it's none of her business if Erna wants to make bad decisions. She warns her matter of factly, "If you don't stretch now you won't be able to get up later."

Erna groans as her tired muscles strain to get her on her feet again. She compromises with them and settles for sitting up. She snatches the canteen from the ground and bolts a third of it before she starts to taste it and makes a face. "Blech. What _is_  that?"

"Mostly water."

'Mostly,' Erna thinks. What a good word.

Mikasa explains, "It will help you recover faster."

The idea of recovering is like a joke to Erna. She doesn't think she'll ever walk again. She groans and laughs, telling Mikasa, "Do you know that you're the quietest most low-key personal trainer ever?"

She reaches for the canteen and twists the cap back on. "You don't need me to motivate you. Wanting to be strong enough to protect the people you're close to is enough motivation."

Mikasa really has a knack for making Erna feel like a piece of shit without meaning to. Erna winces as she realizes how stupid it was to ask her if she ever has days where she just wants to take a break. Of course she doesn't. Nobody should.

She takes off her own shirt and hands it to Erna. It is still dry and soft unlike Erna's soaked rag crumpled up on the ground. "You can put that on to walk back. Wear a sports bra next time."

Erna takes the shirt. "What makes you think there's going to be a next time."

The corners of Mikasa's lips only turn up slightly. She doesn't answer. She moves to the other side of the cart and Erna rolls herself out of the way. Mikasa starts pushing easily like it's nothing. Erna lies on her back and pulls her knee to her chest, holding the stretch for as long as she can.

She mutters, "Fuck," to nothing but the clouds.

* * *

 

Armin finds himself getting very little reading done lately. Even if Erna isn't in the library for him to interrogate, he does more fantasizing than reading. It isn't like him. He just can't help himself lately.

Today she is there for him to interrogate, though sometimes he wonders who is learning more, him or her? When he asks her, "What does it feel like?" she tilts her head at him.

After thinking for a couple seconds, she asks him, "What does the color blue look like?"

Like an idiot, he actually tries to answer and stammers for half a second before she stops him.

"Armin, it's rhetorical. I can't tell you what it feels like any more than you can tell me what blue looks like." She sounds uncharacteristically weary and tired. He's noticed an abrupt change in her manner the last two days. She's more philosophical, and quiet.

"I see."

"What's odaxelagnia?" She still perks up when she learns of something new to her. She's been borrowing from his stash of BDSM books and surprising him with how much she doesn't know. This is what makes him wonder who's teaching who.

It's getting easier for him to answer her. His answers to her questions used to come with a lot of blushing and stuttering. Now he can easily say, "It's a paraphilia surrounding biting and being bitten."

Erna frowns. "Boring. It's such a fancy word I thought it would be more interesting."

"Was it always boring?" Armin is jealous because he still thinks that biting is an exciting idea. He wants the experience it would take to get jaded about being bitten.

"No. It's just the five hundredth time it happens I guess. I barely notice anymore."

"You're lucky."

Erna narrows her eyes at him. "You know, I'm getting sick of that shit. You keep saying I'm lucky because I get to do all this stuff, like you can't possibly. It's not like I'm goddamn special. Just ask Jean to fucking bite you or something."

Armin shrinks in on himself a little and he whines, "I can't."

She stands up and looms over his body sitting on the floor, legs stretched out. She tells him dispassionately, slipping back into her cold demeanor that scares him to his core sometimes, "You just don't want to. You get up the courage to face fucking titans, so you can sure as hell find the guts to ask Jean to fuck you up if you want to."

He thinks there's a trace of disgust to her voice, or he's imagining it because he wants to, because he's disgusted with himself…. because he likes it when she gets annoyed with him.

"You don't want to tell him what you want because then you'd have to take an active part in this and be a part of your own abuse. That wouldn't feel submissive enough for you. You expect him to read your fucking mind instead."

Armin swallows a lump forming in his throat. His heart races when she leans down. A tremor goes up his spine when she whispers in his ear, "He can't read your mind, but I can. I see everything you need. You're so fucking obvious it's shocking that everyone else can't see what a submissive bitch boy you are."

He wants to get up and run, but he also kind of doesn't want to. He's rooted in place unable to do anything but watch her with wide eyes and hope she'll keep going.

But she pops back up, her body language changing entirely, her face switching to the kind of manic expression she gets when she's pleased with herself. Innocently, optimistically, she asks him, "How was that? Good?"

Armin can only make an affirmative whimper.

She picks up the book she'd borrowed from him off the floor. The one that mentioned 'odaxelagnia.'

"I'm going to keep this a little longer. Is that okay?" She asks, bubbly and naïve.

"Yeah," he yelps.

She thanks him and bounces out of the library. He exhales like he's been holding his breath for minutes. He covers his eyes with an arm and lets himself fall to lie on his back. His head cracks against the stone floor and he winces.

* * *

 

Levi walks back to his apartment after a four-hour long meeting with Erwin, Hange, and Mike mentally exhausted even though he'd stopped listening or caring somewhere halfway through when it was clear that the entire meeting was going to be one long, circuitous argument between Hange and Erwin about the necessity of allocating time and equipment to capturing titans for her to experiment on as a side project while she runs tests on Eren. Nothing is ever enough for Hange. She gets one thing she wants and immediately she asks for additional funding or allowances or leeway to do whatever probably illegal thing she can think of. The persistence is admirable, but Levi doesn't need to stick around for every negotiation between her and Erwin. He has no dog in the fight most of the time and will go along with whatever they can agree on.

He wants a cup of tea and silence. What he gets upon opening the door to his apartment is a pile of Erna wrapped up in a comforter on the living room floor.

"Are you dead?" he asks while he takes off his boots.

"I worked out with Mikasa."

"So yes." He tosses a packet of papers that are about 90% military bureaucratic red tape onto the coffee table and he stretches out on the couch.

"She's better at torturing me than you are."

"Oi," he snaps, "be careful about what you say. I'm not in the mood."

She mutters, "Was just kidding," into the fluffy comforter.

"You know you're allowed to lie in the bed, right?"

Erna rolls over from lying on her side to stretching out on her back, looking at the ceiling, and getting herself more wrapped up and tangled in the comforter. "I know. The floor just looked so comfortable."

Levi smirks. "What the hell would make you want to work out with Mikasa anyway? If I'm not torturing you enough you can just say so."

Erna groans and rolls over again, everything aching worse than the one time she had the flu. She can't tell him the real reason. Can't tell him that she had a close call with a titan, all on her own, without anyone's knowledge. That her cables got tangled in its ankles and she got whipped against the hard, sun-drenched dirt of a dry meadow before she could collect herself and slash at its Achilles tendon. Couldn't say that it was an especially coordinated titan, probably a variant, and before it fell it was able to pluck her hook from its flesh and dangle her like a toy from its fingers just as it fell to the ground almost crushing her. She can't tell him that she'd cut her own cable and had to work with the handicap of only having one to get up to the nape of the neck, at least ten meters off the ground even while the monster was prone.

She can't talk about how scary it was to try to make a good enough cut while the thing was still trying to move, thrashing trying to lift itself back up with just its arms and the one good leg while also trying to smack her off of its neck. Can't relate how chaotic it had been. How when she cut its neck and it finally fell and stopped moving she slid to the ground below and laughed and cried simultaneously, loudly, madly, for probably fifteen minutes. She's not going to tell him that she was late to dinner that day not because she lost track of time while training like she'd said, but because before coming back she'd had to rest up in a tree with her eyes closed for as long as possible so that the concussion she'd gotten wouldn't kill her before she could see him again.

She can't even find words to describe how relieved she has been that he is too busy lately to want to play with her, that he gets into bed late at night in the pitch black and wakes up before the sun, because otherwise he might see the bruised ribs and the cuts and the scrapes on her naked body that remind her she is goddamn lucky to have walked away. Lucky that her spine didn't shatter on that first impact with the ground and leave her paralyzed and easily eaten.

She does and doesn't want to talk about how it made her think about her own death. About how she thought she probably wouldn't care if she died, realistically, that is. It would probably happen so fast that there would only be a moment of regret before it was over and she would never feel anything again.

And she will never tell him, no matter how much time passes, that she's sick because she knows she's going to do it again, that the close call only makes her feel proud at having cheated death. She's ashamed that she enjoys not being able to talk to anyone about it because having the secret makes it more of a rush. Keeping it secret is half of the fun now. Even if he found out somehow, and she had to tell him everything, she would never tell him that when she'd coughed up blood on the walk back her first thoughts weren't, 'punctured lung.' They were 'take off the jacket and wipe your mouth on the inside of it so no one sees the stain.'

She doesn't know exactly what all of this has to do with her wanting to go train with Mikasa. She doesn't know herself well enough to have a good handle on her motivations. It could be that she wanted to punish herself. It could be that she is shaken, that she's ashamed, that she is still concussed and not thinking clearly at all. Maybe it's all of those.

So she tells him, "I don't know."


	25. Runic Rhyme

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The 3 P's. Petplay, Primal Kink, and Psychological Torture.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My ideas and writing have been kind of deep and morose lately. Idk what is up with that. It’s like I’m constantly thinking about how I can make this as sad as possible. It’s like I get off on sadness.  
> I thought that might get a little too heavy for you readers, so luckily I’ve been holding onto this random cute idea that is not angsty at all. I just hadn’t found an appropriate place in the story for it. Now seems as good a time as ever.   
> Petplay. All of those allusions to Erna looking like a pissed off cat weren’t for nothing.  
> The chapter title is a vague reference to Poe’s poem, ‘The Bells’. You’ll see why.

Two weeks after her close call with a titan Erna is thrilled that the bruises have faded enough for her to stop sneaking around, which is to say that they have faded completely with no trace of black, blue, yellow, or magenta left behind because if there were even a shadow of a mark that Levi hadn’t put there himself she is sure he would notice. It was a fun challenge for those three weeks to find ways to avoid undressing in front of him, pretending to be asleep until she heard him leave in the morning, only showering in the middle of the day while he was working, stripping and getting under the covers in record time praying he wouldn’t walk in and see the expanse of color going down her left side and back.

It worked out in her favor that he was so busy ever since Erwin got official approval for more extensive tests on Eren. Getting the approval was, apparently, not the final step. It only kicked off a lot of wading through red tape and negotiating for the resources they would need to move forward at all. There is a lot of writing and talking involved. That’s all she knows. She doesn’t care enough to find out more.

But she is starting to care.

It had been convenient that work was keeping Levi too stressed out and too tired to pay attention to her, but now she can play and she wants attention. She’s dying for it actually. She’d thought it would be easy to get, but that isn’t turning out to be the case.

She doesn’t approach him straightforwardly. She doesn’t want to have to. She wants to be able to provoke him to focus on her and forget everything but his evil, sadistic, primal urges. She wants it to be like before when she barely even had to try to get his attention.

Her attempted provocations start off infinitesimally small. First she takes about five minutes longer than she should when making his tea. When he asks her to get him a pen from his office she comes back with paper instead, like she forgot what he wanted somewhere in the thirty feet between the living room and the office. She doesn’t leave the towels folded perfectly. She misses the hamper when she throws her shirt towards it and she leaves it on the floor, something that in the past would have earned some kind of punishment without fail. Nothing happens. He doesn’t even berate her. He picks up the shirt and puts it in the hamper himself without a word.

It scares her. It makes her feel very insecure. She thinks it’s a sign that he’s bored with her, that he doesn’t care.

She stares at him a lot lately, thinking about what she would do if he was bored enough to want to break things off. She isn’t dramatic enough to think that it would kill her. As she stares at his tense jawline, the only thing betraying the boredom in his expression, she thinks she would be crushed, shocked, depressed. She thinks she would tamp all those feelings down deep and try to not feel anything. Her eyes wander over the shadows and lines of hard-as-steel muscles that she can see through his clothes slowly like she’s trying to commit them to memory.

She watches his eyes tick back and forth as he reads the documents he’s holding apathetically on his crossed knee. Thinking about being without a person makes you think about all the things you like most about them. She likes this the most. She likes the way he looks and sounds bored even when he isn’t. It signals an amount of self-control that she’ll never have. He doesn’t seem to notice that she’s staring. Her throat gets tight.

The next morning she goes for broke. She thinks of all of the rules. No boots on the furniture. She’s still afraid to break that one. No interrupting him in his office. But the long meetings mean he hasn’t used his office in weeks, opting to stretch out on the couch late at night with paperwork instead. She needs to dig deep to remember rules that have been followed unfailingly without mention for so long that they ceased to be thought of as rules and became deeply ingrained habits instead.

She remembers that she’s not supposed to come without permission. That one is easily broken.

Or she thought it would be. It turns out that habits are hard to break. She presses her forehead against the tiled shower wall in frustration as she tries to let go enough to let the orgasm she’s been building with gentle, circling fingers for five minutes wash over her. It’s maddening being right on the edge, unable to tip over it and fall. She thinks the problem is that she can’t turn her brain off and stop thinking so much. It’s starting to feel hopeless. Then her teeth find the right side of her lower lip and unconsciously bite down, pointed canine puncturing enough to make the smallest break in the skin. The stinging pain and taste of blood provide the distraction she needs to get her thoughts to stop for just the moment it takes for that orgasm to explode through her. When it finally happens it’s intense and startling. She gasps in shock and moans at the relief. She pants, forehead still against the tiles. As the euphoric feeling and the throbbing fade away she twists around, positioning herself completely under the stream of water again.

She skips into the living room wrapped in a white fluffy towel, hair damp and dripping a little, looking very pleased with herself, playing it up for Levi who is splayed out on the couch, dressed in uniform, one hand holding the rim of a tea cup, other hand rubbing his temples, looking like he is dreading starting the day. She sits down on the couch instead of on the floor next to him. She forgets if that was a rule or a habit, but either way it’s a thing to break.

She gets no reaction from him. Suddenly she feels fucking pathetic needing to resort to these antics to try to get him to notice her. So she finally asks him straight out, “Do you still want to hurt me?”

Without hesitation he answers, “All the goddamned time.”

“I’m being serious,” she scolds him, because if he’s not interested in her anymore then he should at least have the courtesy to not be sarcastic about it.

He turns to look at her, eyes widened just a little bit, like he’s surprised at her. “So am I.”

“Oh.” Well, good. But still, “You don’t pay attention to me.”

“I’m busy all the time and stressed as fuck. You know that,” he says, his voice free of emotion. If anything he sounds tired.

She pouts. He’s been busy before and found time for her. He should know she doesn’t need a lot, even fifteen minutes here and there would be enough. She feels herself getting a little shrill. “But you don’t notice anything I do.”

He narrows his eyes at her and his voice gets dark. “I notice  _everything_  you do.”

“You haven’t,” she pouts.

Calmly, he puts his tea cup down on the table and he tells her, “I notice you’ve been making a mess of the apartment, I notice you’ve been subtly fucking up anything I ask you to do, and I notice that you just made yourself come in the shower.”

Feeling a little indignant about being proven so thoroughly wrong she crosses her arms. “Then why haven’t you done anything about it?”

“Fucks sake, Erna. Because I don’t have the time to talk to you and see whether or not you’d be okay if I did anything about it. You think I can magically tell the difference between you fucking up because you’re trying to get my attention and you fucking up because you’re in some dark place in your head?”

And then she understands. He wasn’t ignoring her. He was walking on eggshells around her because her sanity from day to day isn’t something he feels he can be confident in. She puts her hands down on her knees, ashamed of herself for all of her assumptions. “I guess I did kind of think that.”

“I’m observant, but I’m not literally a mind reader. It’s not like you’re not busy either. Whenever I do have a minute, you’re fucking gone.”

She wishes she could tell him that she’s only been making herself scarce so that she could keep her secrets. “Well I’m not busy anymore.”

“You understand that what we’re doing is important, right?”

“I do, it’s just –”

“Because sometimes you’re so focused on what you want in the moment you’re incapable of thinking two seconds into the future.”

“Yeah, but –”

“I’m dealing with getting ready to push the limits of a shitty brat who turns into a titan, hoping we don’t fucking kill him and lose any chance we have of taking back Wall Maria, mentally preparing myself for a shit ton of casualties on this mission, and –”

“I just thought you didn’t want me anymore!”

That shuts him up for a beat of silence. Then he sighs, tiredly leans back against the couch, and rakes his fingers through his hair. He looks upwards and, of course, because she doesn’t understand what he saw in her in the first place, she thinks he’s going to tell her that she’s right and he doesn’t want her anymore. Instead he says, “Don’t you  _dare_  ever think that again.”

She opens her mouth to answer him back, but he interrupts her. “I’m fucking obsessed with you. You know that.” He says it like it’s an obvious fact, not like he’s trying to comfort her in her moment of insecurity.

“I’m sorry. I assumed the worst.”

“Well don’t assume shit about me. The insecurity thing goes both ways you know. When I see you breaking all these fucking rules I feel insecure because it looks like you don’t give a shit anymore.”

She snorts. “You don’t get insecure about me.”

He picks up his tea again. “I do. You’re unpredictable as fuck. Who knows what you’re going to be into tomorrow?”

She smirks a little.

“Don’t fucking smile at me,” he deadpans.

She brings a hand up to cover her mouth so that he won’t see her smiling.

He grabs her wrist and pulls her hand down, twisting it only a little. “Alright. We’re starting over. I’m not punishing you for any of this shit and you’re going back to being good for me.”

She nods readily, happy that her fears were unfounded. “I’ll be very good.”

“Good,” he says before tightening his grip on her wrist and lifting her up by it, twisting her around and depositing her on the floor. “No pets on the furniture.”

She hums contentedly. She stretches languidly on the floor, knees under her and arms stretching out in front, then she leans forward, back and neck arching. She looks out of the corner of her eye to check his reaction and catches him looking at the clock. She sits up, defeated, and pulls her knees in underneath her. “You have to go, don’t you?”

“I have to go ten minutes ago.” He stands up. He isn’t going to apologize for needing to do his job. She can respect that. But he does promise, “We’ll find time later.”

She only hums, skeptical. As he pulls his boots on, he adds, “I hope that orgasm was really good. Pull that shit again and I’m going to have to retrain my pet to only come on command.”

“How?” she doesn’t want to push, but needs to know just to satisfy her curiosity.

He pauses at the door. “Bring you to the edge and back down over and over again until you’re a begging mess who can’t remember her own name.”

She chuffs. “Don’t threaten me with a good time.”

There’s a flash in his eyes that she hasn’t seen in what feels like a long time. “If you want to test me, go ahead and try it.” He walks out, closing the door behind him.

* * *

 

 

When Erna is finally dressed and slinking through the dining hall for breakfast, only half of her friends are still hanging around. It’s understandable. She’s quite late.

Mikasa is training. Erna would have gone with her, but she learned quickly that three days a week is all she can handle of Mikasa’s training. She went yesterday and her shoulders are still stiff and in pain no matter how much she tries to stretch them.

Jean is training his fucking team. Everyone is sick of his boasting about his much deserved promotion to team leader, making a big show of leaving breakfast early so that he can work on 3D maneuvers with his recruits. He’s gotten a little better about the bragging, only because Eren told him that if he kept it up he was going to tell his team about the time Jean got lost trying to take a short cut to the end of a ten mile run when they were in the Training Corps, or about the time he got stuck hanging upside down in a tree when they were first learning the 3DMG, or about any of apparently a hundred other embarrassing incidents. Eren is a fucking master historian when it comes to the chronology of Jean fucking up.

Eren is absent from the table, too. Erna hopes he finally is embarrassing Jean in front of his team. Eren’s been quiet and tense lately and could use the pick-me-up he would get from watching Jean sweat.

“Coffee,” Krista says as she slides a full mug down the table to Erna.

“You didn’t have to –”

“Yes I did. If I don’t, you steal someone else’s.”

“Well yeah, but that’s their problem, not yours.”

Erna’s hand darts to take a potato from Sasha’s plate. She retracts it, empty, just quickly enough to save it from getting speared by a fork that makes a thunk sound as Sasha drives it straight into the table. Someday Erna is going to be faster or Sasha is going to be slower, but for now she shrugs and reaches across the table to take a piece of toast from Armin’s plate instead. He raises no objection.

She sips her coffee. “What are you nerds doing today?”

Connie answers between spoonfuls of oatmeal, “Archery practice.”

Erna tilts her head at him and Sasha. “… Why?”

Sasha’s answer is short, she’s not willing to pause eating. “Rusty.”

“If anything, shouldn’t you be practicing your 3D maneuvers?”

Connie makes an unconcerned huff. “3D skills are on point.”

Erna rolls her eyes. “You can’t kill a titan with a bow and arrow.”

Sasha smiles to herself. “You’d be surprised.”

Connie finishes eating and points at Erna with his spoon. “Besides, shouldn’t you be practicing? I heard you got tangled up and had to cut your cable.”

That was the lie she’d told the supply officer so that she could get a replacement 3DMG after the incident with that variant that nearly killed her. It was the most difficult lie she ever told just for the pure shame of it, such a rookie move.

“That doesn’t sound like you,” Armin says.

“Everything okay?” Krista asks with subtle concern.

Erna gulps down the rest of the lukewarm coffee. “I’m awesome. Everyone makes mistakes.”

* * *

 

 

Erna finds Eren later. Or he finds her. He’s waiting for her on the perimeter wall of Headquarters when she comes back from proving to herself that slipping up and nearly getting eaten by a titan was a fluke. She killed three today. Not a scratch on her.

Eren looks at her very disapprovingly, his green eyes flashing with anger. “You feel good about this?”

She sneers at him. He isn’t going to ruin her day. “Fuck yes, I do. Why wouldn’t I?”

His forehead wrinkles and his brow creases. His nostrils flare a little, but she doesn’t care. Until he says, “Levi was looking for you.”

“Shit.”

“Yeah,” Eren says, still sounding pissed. “He had a lot of people looking for you. Of course no one knew where you were.”

“Shit.” Erna says it louder this time. Inside her head she is screaming in panic. She needs an alibi - a believable one. She needs to calm down and stop sweating. She needs to get rid of her 3DMG. “Eren, do me a favor.”

He puts his hands up. “No. I’m not helping you. I told you to stop this a long time ago.” He turns his back on her, ready to go back down to the ground below.

Erna wails desperately, “Okay! No favors. Just don’t go yet. I feel like I’m going to hyperventilate.”

He stops, standing on the edge of the wall in silence, every muscle coiled like he wants to hit something. But finally he turns around and walks back. He offers his hand and she grabs onto it for dear life, thanking him. She murmurs, “I just need to think for a minute.”

Eren sits down and she follows, feeling like the wind’s been knocked out of her. He says, “Take all the time you need, but promise you won’t do this again.”

She hums and he must take that as her complying because he doesn’t press her. He’s wrong, though. She would never make a promise she knows she couldn’t keep.

After a short time she tells him she’s okay. She tells him to go ahead and return first. She starts back a few minutes after him, only she doesn’t go straight back. She takes a detour to where the horses graze. She finds Raven and kneels in the grass, keeping enough distance to not get kicked.

She waits. In the time that she’s waiting, she tries not to let her thoughts run away with her. Over and over again she has to fight the urge to get up and go running back to the castle to frantically explain herself. That would make things worse. She has a plan, and it’s hard for her because that plan hinges on inaction.

Finally, after what seems like an hour, someone finds her. It’s a newer recruit, someone she doesn’t recognize who calls her Ms. Raban, but she doesn’t kill them for it. She’s relieved that it’s someone she doesn’t know, someone who would have no reason to cover for her. They tell her that Levi sent them to find her and she acts mildly surprised. She smiles. She puts a bounce in her step, because this is what she would do if she found out that Levi was looking for her and she didn’t have anything to hide.

She doesn’t ask how long they were looking for her. She acts completely unconcerned, like her insides aren’t twisting with worry. She makes the recruit keep up with her fast pace, like she doesn’t feel like she might be hurrying towards her own execution.

She expects to find him immediately, waiting and angry. She is ready to act innocent and naïve. All her mental preparation turns out to be unnecessary when they reach the castle. Erna opens the apartment door to emptiness. Her escort tells her that Levi most likely had to hurry back into the meeting. They tell her that he’d only had about an hour or so in between. So he’d only sent a few people out to find her quickly before he had to get back to work.

He was probably still displeased that she couldn’t be retrieved in that hour, but it wasn’t the tense, high stress situation she’d prepared herself for. If he had no hesitation about going right back to his meeting, then he isn’t that suspicious.

She tells the recruit, “That’s okay. I’ll wait here.”

When she’s alone again, at least thirty minutes are spent just sighing in relief and thanking whatever gods for her incredible luck.

She hears the door open hours later, a little before dusk. The sounds of Levi’s boots being taken off, being placed on the floor, his tired sigh, the crack of his neck, all so quiet she could be imagining them, could be automatically putting them into place because she’s heard them so many times.

He finds her in the tub, under a cloud of thick bubbles, eyes closed with head and shoulders resting against the porcelain like she’s melting. She hums a greeting. He asks, “Where the fuck were you all day?”

“Outside.”

“No shit. I had six messengers look for you.”

She opens her eyes and looks at him like she doesn’t understand what the big deal is. “I went and hung out with my horse. I can’t just stay in here all day, I feel all cooped up.”

He looks at her skeptically, the shrewd gaze of his cold, grey eyes taking her apart. “When you throw a fit about me not having enough time for you and I tell you that I will make time, I expect you to make yourself available.”

She squeaks. “I’m sorry?” She sits up a little more, thick swaths of bubbles sliding down from her collarbone, over her breasts, and rejoining the foam floating on the surface of the water. “I didn’t think you meant in the middle of the day. I figured you meant you’d make time later.” She pauses, adding hopefully, “Like around now.”

He crosses his arms. His voice is tinted with tones of evil. “I  _do_  have time now.” When she perks up, he warns her, “That’s not a good thing for you.”

She slides back down under the water a little. “No?”

The corners of his mouth turn up just barely. “You know, I’m almost glad you fucked up. I got you a gift that’s perfect for this.”

Erna’s eyebrows crease. “I don’t understand.”

“It’s a gift and a punishment. Stay there.” He walks out and she can hear him in the bedroom. She tries to listen carefully, tries to ascertain a hint of what might be next. He hasn’t done anything unexpected in a long time and that combined with the leftover panic from earlier puts her on edge.

She calls after him, “When did you have time to get me a gift?”

She doesn’t hear him rummaging through the closet or drawers or anything. That means he knows exactly where it is. Of course he does. He answers, “In the city. I’ve been holding onto it.”

She wonders what kind of gift could also serve as punishment. She hopes it’s pain-related, like a flogger or something. She saw a leather flogger in one of Armin’s books and she’s been meaning to ask Levi if they could get one or if maybe he already has one that he hasn’t thought to use on her yet.

Before he comes back in he warns her to close her eyes and she complies, obediently waiting. She is so used to listening for him that it’s like she can see him anyway. She hears him take two quick steps over to the tub and kneel. Then she doesn’t hear anything. She feels something around her neck and instinct tells her to open her eyes and grab for it before it can choke the life out of her. When she tenses, he deadpans calmly, “Hold still.”

She feels the thing around her neck tighten a little. It doesn’t choke her. She feels Levi’s fingers move deftly, fastening a buckle with the fluid grace and precision of fingers that have fastened a thousand buckles before. Then there’s a metallic sound, the click of a lock at the back of her neck.

“You can open your eyes.”

She opens them, but it doesn’t help. No matter how she looks down she can’t see what’s fastened around her neck. She touches. It’s leather. Her fingers frantically grab at the back of her neck. The buckle is locked in place with a tiny padlock. She tugs at it and she hears a tinny, tinkling sound. It’s not coming from the lock. She feels around the front of her neck again and finds the tiny bell attached to the front. It’s a collar. It’s a collar with a bell.

“No.”

“You don’t like it?” Levi asks sarcastically, his voice low and husky, thoroughly enjoying her reaction.

“This is humiliating.”

“That’s part of the whole point. The other part is that you’ll be easy to find now.”

She taps the bell, testing it. The clapper inside is too willing to rattle around and make a high pitched jingle. She chews at the inside of her cheek. Her face feels hot, her heart feels indignant. She is a soldier, a goddamn good one. She can hack and slash giant monsters to pieces, and here she is with a cute little cat collar ringing a sweet, high bell at her every movement. Levi reaches out and holds her chin, turning her face to look at him. “Are you going to thank me?”

Her heart sinks in her chest at the humiliation of it. “Thank you.”

“Good pet.” He cards a hand through her wet hair and scratches a little behind her ear like she really is an animal. He stands up and gets a towel for her, opening it and holding it up as she takes the cue and steps out of the tub. She lets him dry her hair a little and wrap it around her.

She keeps self-consciously reaching for the collar, touching it, then putting her hands back down at her sides. She wonders where she would hide the key if she were him. He steps around to the front of her and just stares at her for a minute, a smug look on his face as he enjoys the emotions playing out over hers. She can’t hide her dismay or the emotional high that comes from being debased and dehumanized like this. She hates it and it thrills her and she loves it at the same time.

He points towards the bedroom and tells her, “Bed. On all fours. Now.” Just as a sound starts to escape her lips he warns, “Don’t whine.” So she stifles it. He adds, “Don’t say a word.”

She fills in the implication with a silent admonition in her head, ‘pets can’t talk.’ The bell on her collar tinkles with every step she makes on her way. She tries to walk more softly, on the balls of her feet. The towel gets discarded before she arranges herself on the bed on her knees and elbows, trying to relax as much as possible, not knowing how long she’ll have to hold this position. The sound of the water draining from the tub follows Levi. She expects him to ignore her and make her wait, to get undressed slowly and put things away like she’s not even there, but he goes straight to her,  impatient and unwilling to delay, betraying his eagerness. “You,” he says as he palms himself through the white cloth of his pants, “have been a very bad kitten.”

Is that what she is? Erna’s never been fond of cats. At best, in her eyes, they are useful. Mostly she thinks they’re haughty, vain little bitches with deadly teeth and claws, and… oh… yeah, she can kind of identify with that. She leans forward and gently butts her forehead against his hard abs. He hums and pats her hair. “Are you sorry that your master couldn’t find you when he wanted you?”

The thing is that she really is sorry. She is so relieved that Levi didn’t figure out why he couldn’t find her, and she is very sorry. Sorry enough that she’s more than willing to abandon all of her pride and make an apologetic mewling sound.

There’s a very slight hitch in his breath at that. She can see the outline of his hardening cock through his pants. She makes another sound, a curious, trilling meow. She is inclined to think that this is utterly ridiculous, but she is very intrigued by the way his hips unconsciously snap forward when she purrs at him. “Pretty little thing,” he murmurs, “Are you going to be good?”

She trills again. She watches fascinated as he removes his jacket, his cravat, and his shirt and puts them on the bed.  She thinks she’s being good when she reaches for his belt, eager to get at his cock, but he smacks her hand away and scolds her, “Don’t claw at me.”

She acts unfazed, because as far as she’s seen, cats don’t particularly care about upsetting people. She looks away as if his half-naked body _isn’t_  the most interesting thing in the room. His fingers run over her scalp and he commands her attention again. She arches upward toward his hand. It runs down the side of her neck and she leans into it, closing her eyes and stretching, trying to get his hand to press against her harder, purring at him. When he stops patting her, her eyes snap open. He’s looking at her with that evil, sadistic smile to his eyes, kind of like he’s gloating that she plays the part so well. She’s going to make him regret how in character she can be. She closes her fingers into paws, presses them against his chest and stretches, reaching her neck towards his hand, trying to get him to pat her. He moves his hands out of reach, probably thinking that she’ll pout or whine. She thinks that wouldn’t be very cat-like, so with lightning-quick reflexes she snatches at his right hand with her nails, brings it to her mouth, and bites down, playfully but not hard. Just as quick he pulls his hand away and smacks her across the face, hard.

She recovers from the momentary shock and hisses at him, lowering her shoulders to the bed and arcing her back as if she is prepared to pounce. His hand moves fast, grabs her by her hair and pulls her head back, baring all of her vulnerable throat for him. “I think you need some more training,” he says darkly.

She stills herself and doesn’t move an inch until he lets go of her hair. He considers his options. “I can’t have my kitten biting. How should I punish her?”

Erna circles the bed on her hands and knees and lies down on her side, stretching out lazily. She bats at imaginary dust motes with her paws. “I know,” Levi says as he puts his hands on her shoulders and pushes her onto her back, “Kittens hate getting wet.”

This one doesn’t, Erna thinks, but then Levi is on the bed, pushing her knees up, positioning himself between them and lifting her hips. She yowls when he pushes his tongue against her. She tries to reach down and scratch at him or push him away, but he holds her down with one strong forearm pressed against her ribs as the flat of his tongue laves her. He’s right, she hates the wet feeling of it. She wriggles and squirms, but he stays right with her, digging fingers into her hip and warning her, “Hold still.”

She only gets one more delicate lick at her outer lips before he forces his tongue inside her and a high, sharp whine strangles her throat. She doesn’t know why, but she hates tongues. Even Levi’s. Especially Levi’s. His tongue is evil. He fucks it into her a little and she wails. He stops and she feels him shift, the weight of his arm on her ribs disappears. She lets her eyes open and sees him sitting up, looking down at her.

“If my kitten can’t take her punishment she can say so, but I’m going to be disappointed.”

Her chest rises and falls with fast, deep breaths. She whimpers. She wants to take the chance he’s giving her to tell him to stop, but she doesn’t want to put out there everything that it would mean. If she makes it stop then that means she doesn’t trust him, that she thinks he would force something she couldn’t handle on her. She doesn’t want to think those things. She doesn’t want him to think that she doesn’t trust him implicitly. She wants to prove that she can take anything. “It’s okay,” she surrenders, a little too eagerly and still sounding unsure.

He slides a hand up her leg, gentle but firm in a way she's not used to. His eyes are full of admiration as he praises her. “You’re so good.” He kisses her navel and runs his hand down her side comfortingly, caressing her and murmuring assurances as his lips brush her skin and travel down her stomach. "Such a good pet."  Normally she would hate this careful treatment, but she's grateful. It’s what she needs right now. She wants so badly to know that she's being good and that she's okay. The fingers that were digging into her hip to hold her still relax their bruising grip and move to her wet slit, touching lightly and teasing her open. “So obedient for your master.”

She brings a hand to her mouth and worries a finger between her teeth as she waits for the assault of his tongue. One of his fingers presses gently inside her and a moan makes her relax her jaw. She bucks her hips to beg for more. His breath barely ghosts over her clit, but she doesn’t care how close his mouth is, she wants his finger deeper inside her. He lets her roll her hips and fuck herself on his hand while he touches just the tip of his tongue to her clit. He doesn’t lick her or lap at her, he just holds his tongue there and lets her control the friction. It doesn’t feel gross, doesn't make her think of drool and hot Titan breath. It doesn’t feel unbearable. It feels really good and she wants to come. She’s right on the edge when he removes his hand and stops. Her eyes snap open again, confused, heartbroken, imploring, begging him to finish her off.

He pats her head patronizingly. “You did very well, but I can’t let you come when you’re being punished. Defeats the point.”

She pants a little as she catches her breath. She alternates between whines and mewls, canting her hips hungrily, trying to beg and plead while still being a good cat. He quiets her by tracing his thumb across her lip. She stills and looks up at him entranced. A single finger scratches under her chin and he tells her, “Quiet down.” Palming his cock through his pants again, he asks, “Do you think it’s time for good kittens to eat?”

Erna eagerly gets onto her hands and knees, her collar jingling again, butting her head against his hip and licking at the cloth covering his straining cock. She tastes a tiny, damp spot of precum on the fabric and she mewls insistently at him.

He smirks. “Okay. Calm down.” She watches with intense fascination as his fingers undo his belt, open his pants, and free his cock. It springs out, heavy and proud. He takes himself in hand and strokes up and down slowly twice. His other hand cups the back of her head and gives her a gentle pull, as he reminds her, “Don’t bite.”

He wraps his hand around the base while she gives the engorged head a couple of tentative, curious licks. She stares wide-eyed for a moment when it twitches, like this is all new to her. When she licks and laps at him more eagerly, giving a pleased purr, he removes his hand and she nuzzles at the base of his shaft, pressing her tongue flat against the weight of it and slowly licking all the way up, lapping at the bead of precum at the tip. She takes her time slowly licking his cock all over, making sure she doesn’t neglect an inch, maybe teasing and torturing him a little but certainly not on purpose. She pauses her slow licking to look up at him, eyes running over an expanse of hard, taut muscle jagged with scars before her gaze tests on his face. He meets her eyes as she licks the taste of him from her lips and his lids close halfway as his cock twitches. He looks almost in pain. She dips down, arching her back, sticking her ass high in the air and wiggling it a little like she has a tail. Her wet tongue curls around his balls and she laps at them eagerly. He closes his eyes and a broken moan escapes his lips. She feels very pleased with herself and wants to make him make more broken, desperate sounds, but he reaches and grabs her ass roughly, pulling her forward, his cock smearing saliva against her cheek. His hips stutter and move until it's pressing against her closed lips. “That’s a good girl," his voice is hoarse, "Take it all down.”

She hums and only parts her lips a little so that he has to force it in and rut into her mouth, because she doesn't like to make it easy. Slowly she becomes more and more incapable of caring about anything but making him come as his hips move forward and back. He's unconsciously whispering expletives in English and in French, that goddamned bell ringing with every thrust. Leaning over her, his hands reach to grip her ass and pull her forward, forcefully, abruptly, like she's an object that he's having trouble getting into place. He starts fucking her throat open at an unforgiving pace, grinding his pelvic bone against her nose as he pushes in all the way. She easily wills herself to stop breathing so that she can take all of him. She swallows a little, on purpose, tightening up, clenching and then relaxing the muscles of her throat around him, and he loses whatever control he had left. He grunts like an animal as he pushes his hips into her, burying his cock in the tightness of her throat. His hands leave her ass and hold her face, one wrapped in her hair and the other cupped under her throat as if he can feel and stroke his cock through her. 

He grinds against her face again, angling his cock to more uncomfortable positions that make her throat tighten up and try to reject it. He likes some fight. She tries to relax, but it’s not under her control. Her body starts to struggle for air and her hands reach for his hips. Her claws dig into him.

He grunts and pants, his voice is completely raw. “Good fucking kitten. Just a little more. Going to fill you up. Take all of your master's cum.”

His thrusts get harder and more erratic. When she feels his cock start to twitch and pulse, and he says, “Fucking take it,” she can’t help it, a tightness coils in her abdomen and she tries to will it away, but it won’t hold back. She comes apart. The thought that she's a needy little slut who can't control herself doesn't help.  Spasms rack her body as an orgasm makes her wet little cunt contract and relax over and over in waves. He comes directly in her throat, holding her head still so that she can’t pull away until his cock is done pulsing, squeezing out every last drop. When he releases her from his grip, she falls to the mattress coughing and curling in on herself, overstimulated by so many sensations.

 He stays up on his knees, looking down, marveling at her, a little shocked at everything that just happened. “Did you just come without touching yourself?”

“I’m sorry,” she whines.

He shakes his head and lowers himself to the bed next to her, pulling her close and holding her so tight he isn’t making it any easier to breathe. “Definitely need more training. No more coming without permission," he whispers into her damp hair, inhaling the scent of the jasmine flower shampoo he got for her.

She murmurs tiredly, “Didn’t mean to. Just happened.”

He pats her hair and tells her to be quiet and go to sleep, but she is already half asleep before he finishes his sentence.

* * *

 

He’s gone when she wakes up. Disappointment creeps through her dragging the corners of her mouth downward, but when she pads out to the living room she's relieved to find him on the couch. He knows when she’s behind him because of the little silver bell that announces her every step now. He tells her over his shoulder, “Didn’t want to wake you up. You seemed pretty fucked out.”

“How long did I sleep?”

He hums. "Probably an hour and a half. I would have stayed, but I thought I could get some work done and have more time for you while you were awake." The hint of regret underneath his even, bored expression tells her that it was a nice thought that didn't work out, he still has no time to spare for her. 

She tries to cheer him up. "It's okay. I only need five minutes here and there." She kneels on the floor next to the couch and he puts down what he was working on so that she can rest her head in his lap. 

"It's going to be like this for a while."

"I know. Don't stress out over me." Unbidden, the memory of that morning pushes itself to the front of her brain and she remembers how he admitted that he gets insecure too, as unimaginable as that is. She presses her forehead against his thigh, her collar ringing. "I'll always be here, even if you're too busy for me."

"Yeah," he says off handedly, "I’ll manage my time better, but you need to check in more. No more slinking around like you're trying to hide from me like you were the past couple weeks."

She tries to keep a good poker face and not wince. "I was keeping myself busy. Didn't want to bother you."

"I like when you bother me,” he says matter of factly.

"Might not be smart to encourage me," she warns. 

"Nah," he hums wearily and melts into the couch, inviting her up next to him. While she curls up on the soft cushions he muses, "It's entertaining to watch you harness that insanity and repurpose it to find new and surprising ways to bother me."

She snorts. "That's a lovely compliment, thank you." She twists over onto her stomach, propping herself up on her elbows, head resting on a hand and feet swinging in the air behind her. Her fingers play with the bell hanging above the points of her collarbone, making music with it. “You’re pretty surprising yourself. I never would have thought you were into pet play.”

A thin eyebrow arches at her. He isn’t sure he likes how many new things she’s learning from Armin. “I’m not. You inspire me with the way you hiss and spit every time I make you take a shower.”

“Well,” she lowers her head, baring the back of her slender neck for him, “Can you take it off so I can go to dinner?”

There’s a full, meaningful silence between them as he reaches for the tiny lock holding the collar in place. His fingers rub the cold brass. He contemplates it for a moment. Instead of freeing it from her neck, he says, “No.”

She isn’t sure she heard him right. She tilts her head back up to look at him. “Sorry, what?” Because surely he can’t have just told her no. That would be unreasonable.

“I’m still annoyed about not being able to find you earlier, so you’re going to keep it on.” He reaches for his tea, left untended on the table and ignores her look of shock.

She’s frozen and in a state of disbelief, watching him sip his tea. Then suddenly she fights, fingers scrabbling at the buckle, twisting and trying to break the lock, the bell ringing like mad as she does so.

“If you try to take it off, I’m going to make it worse,” he warns.

“There is nothing that could make this worse!” she wails.

He sips his tea casually, a cold contrast to her hysteria, and he tells her, “I got you ears and a tail to go with it.”

Defeated, her hands leave the collar alone and she pouts. “I can’t leave the apartment like this.”

“Good. You’ll be that much easier to find.”

He’s clearly made up his mind, so she gives up on the whining and he gets back to work on the stack of papers on the table. Nothing she can say will make him relent. She puts her energy to other possible solutions. While she thinks, she worries the bell with her fingers, fidgeting with it, not noticing the sound it makes as she’s deep in concentration.

“Stop that,” he scolds her off-handedly.

She doesn’t realize what he’s talking about for a second, then she registers what she’s doing with her hand. An epiphany hits her. She has wicked ideas. Giving him fair warning as she gets up to go get dressed, she tells him, “You’re going to regret this much more than I am.”

He doesn’t even raise an eyebrow at the threat. He mumbles his answer, “I doubt that.”

She likes that he doesn’t believe her. It’s going to make it more fun when he suddenly realizes that he fucked up and collared her with an instrument of psychological torture. As she steps around the bedroom she practices. How much bounce does she need in her step to make sure that she can get the most reverberation out of her little silver weapon, how well can she slightly curve her neck a little more with every turn of her head to coax small, plaintive rings out of it? She works to keep her movements exceedingly subtle so that she’ll be able to feign innocence later. It’s simple; a toe-touch rolling to the ball of her foot and coming down a little harder on her heel, just a slight inversion of a normal walking step and her bell chimes and buzzes with constant vibration.

The ringing doesn’t bother her because she’s the one controlling it.

She comes back out dressed in black leggings and a long-sleeved v-neck. Levi is a little thrown by the change in her attitude when she sweetly asks if he’s coming to dinner or wants her to bring him back something. He hides the suspicion from his voice when he tells her, “No thanks, I’m going down in a minute.”

 She slinks around the couch running her fingers over the back of it and getting a read of his body language as her collar rings incessantly. He might not be fully conscious of it yet, but he is annoyed. His shoulders are tense. “See you then,” she says innocently. A soft, tintinnabulation follows her out the door.

He wonders at how she apparently changed her mind about being embarrassed to leave the apartment like that, but he doesn’t think too much on it.

* * *

 

 

Erna gets some looks, just like she knew she would. She just doesn’t let it get to her. Normally a derisive snort directed her way would get someone flayed, but she keeps calm. She finds comfort in the certainty that her plan will work, though it might take some time. It’s a long walk to the dining hall, so she has some time to get used to the looks and the raised eyebrows. She’s hardened to it by the time she makes it all the way to her friends’ table. It’s slow, the quiet that sets in, with Armin being the first to put down his fork and drop his jaw upon noticing her and the new accessory and more of her friends noticing, quietly staring in shock as she sits down with her plate nonchalantly.

“What. the fuck. is that?” Jean is the first to ask.

Erna hums at him questioningly as if she doesn’t know what he’s talking about.

“Is it a cat collar?” Mikasa asks, knowing full well what it is, but not knowing what else can be said.

“Oh,” Erna says innocently. She reaches for the black piece of leather and taps the bell, “Yeah. Levi gave it to me.”

The obvious question, “Why?” gets asked by Eren.

“It’s a gift,” she says with finality. Aside from a few more questions, the subject gets dropped relatively quickly because of Erna’s apathetic attitude, as if this is such a normal thing that it’s completely unremarkable. Only Armin keeps looking at her, a dusting of red starting at his chest and climbing up to his ears.

She waits for Levi, watches him in her peripheral vision as he goes to sit with Hange and Mike. She gives him exactly eight minutes to settle in before she leaves her friends and bounces over to him, very fond of the tinny music that floats over with her.

She ignores Mike and Hange and, unlike her annoying friends, they know better than to ask about the whole collar thing. It’s easy to lie through her teeth, to lean down and whisper to Levi that wearing his collar in front of everyone makes her hot, easy to convince him to go back to the room. He’s eager to indulge her rather than reprimand her for being presumptuous. And more so than she thought, it’s easy to moan quietly enough so as to not drown out the bell. She wants to ride him and he lets her, a bad move on his part that lets her writhe in a way that makes the most noise possible. At some point he reaches for her collar, trying to grab at the bell and hold it in his fist to quiet it, but she closes her eyes and leans back with a breathy sigh, keeping just out of his reach. His hands bruise her waist and hold her still while he thrusts up into her, but even that is enough to cause a soft, silvery noise to accompany every movement. She acts like she doesn’t know what’s going on, like she doesn’t even hear it. He growls in frustration and flips her over, getting her on her back and pushing her into the mattress like he would bury her, trapping the bell in his tight fist. He uses the collar as leverage to hold her still as he snaps his hips into her, his knuckles turn white trying to keep that soft, angelic sound muffled.

Erna gloats to herself, to the darkness, as he finishes with a relieved sigh, still keeping the bell wrapped in his fist so that it won’t peal when he falls to the bed beside her. When everything is still, he finally releases it from his death grip.

She asks oh so innocently, with traces of concern, “That was longer than usual. You okay?”

There’s a long silence apart from the sound of Levi catching his breath. Finally he says, “I was… distracted. Don’t worry about it. Go to sleep.”

He doesn’t see her smile in the darkness. Gloating to herself that she knows him so well, knowing that he won’t ever admit that the punishment he’s forced on her is driving him crazy, that he’d be too proud to tell her to stop, or to take the collar off just to save his sanity.

She mimics sleep, breathing slowly and heavily, until she is sure that he’s drifted off. She moves slightly and restlessly all night, catching sleep here and there, twisting and turning every few hours and waking him with the song of her collar. Under the cover of pitch blackness she smiles at how clever it was to drink coffee at dinner. At dawn she notices that Levi gets out of bed more carefully and gently than usual, trying not to rock or jolt the mattress.

Without the restriction of the collar she might not have wanted to go back outside the walls killing titans right away, but it’s the simple fact that she can’t that makes her want to more than ever. There’s an undeniable itch to go back to being able to sneak around and have her secrets. It raises the urgency of getting Levi to remove the collar.  All of the energy that she had been putting into not getting caught now goes into whittling away at Levi’s sanity.

She fabricates plausible reasons for being in his vicinity almost all day, not directly bothering him, but going about her business which happens to be close by enough that he can always hear her. She isn’t sure it’s enough. Sometimes she can’t tell if he’s starting to tune her out. She decides to up her game.

“Erna, you can’t be in here,” Erwin half-shouts when she bursts into the middle of a meeting in his office uninvited.

She cocks a hip and crosses her arms. “Yeah, I figured, what with the guard outside and all. I’m not dumb.”

Erwin looks angry, but she doesn’t care. Hange and Mike look grateful for the distraction. Levi looks like he’d like to cut her head off just for the sake of stopping all the noise. Said guards, having recovered from getting their heads cracked against a wall and told to shut up by a small, dollish girl with black curls and a cat collar around her neck, burst in behind her apologizing for not being able to stop her from kicking the door in, but Erwin waves them off telling them it’s alright. Erna slams the door closed behind them, glaring at the back of their heads before wheeling around to face Erwin again with her fabricated excuse for barging in. “I have demands that were supposed to be met weeks ago and I’m sick of being ignored.”

Her outrage is a farce, and a thin justification for being close enough and loud enough to annoy Levi, but there’s a sliver of real outrage there which she grasps and uses to affect an offended tone. She taps her foot impatiently while she waits for Erwin to rebound and ask tiredly, “What is it?” adding the caveat, “Quickly.”

“I want my chocolate. You promised. Where is it?” she says in a quick, staccato rhythm.

First he raises his eyebrows in surprise, but then his face falls into that very tired and fed-up look he gets sometimes.  “That’s what you burst in here for?”

_Well, also this_ , she thinks as she starts tapping and playing with the bell, while she talks, as if she’s doing it all absentmindedly, making Levi go positively rigid. “You made a deal and it’s fucking important to me.”

“It’s not that easy, Erna.”

That is the kind of response she was expecting. That is her cue to go into a full histrionic meltdown tantrum. “You haven’t even been trying, have you? I had to smile, Erwin! I fucking flirted and smiled at that fucking general until he gave the approval for this project you’re so goddamn busy with and all I asked for was some fucking chocolate!” She doesn’t normally gesture when she speaks, but she does now, because every movement makes more ringing and tinkling.

Her tantrums don’t really work on Erwin and she knows this already. Not many forms of insanity do get to the man who has seen every form of eccentricity and obsession in the people he works with. So he answers her evenly, “I haven’t forgotten about it. Be patient. Shipments don’t come every day, maybe next month.”

She steps towards his desk, gripping the edge tight with her fingers as she says low and dangerous, “But Levi got a crate of tea yesterday.” 

Erwin is unwavering, not one to be intimidated into making excuses. He looks back down at the papers on his desk and says dismissively, “Be patient.”

That won’t do. She wants to make a scene so that she can flounce out of there in a flurry of jingling madness. She thinks for a second, and then she leans forward, arching her back seductively, stretching over Erwin’s desk, pouting and whining in almost a whisper, keening, “But Daddy…”

Erwin abruptly stands up from his chair and shouts, “Out!” pointing her in the direction of the door, his face red and contorted with rage.

Erna wears an impish grin as she skips carelessly out the door. She catches Levi scowling at the floor and rubbing his temples, probably trying to alleviate a headache.

Not wanting to overdo it, she makes herself scarce after that episode. She ends up in the library, hunkered down with a book. She skims, but doesn’t read or absorb anything, the manic effort she’s putting into being a spitfire makes it hard to concentrate. The adrenaline keeps the words from sticking.

Armin finds her there, all perfect blonde hair and blue eyes and pressed uniform. Sometimes she just wants to wreck all of that perfection and perceived innocence. He must see that. He must know that he makes it hard for her not to lash out. She wonders what he’s aiming towards whenever he sits near her in the quiet isolation of the library. It’s like he’s a clever little mouse taunting and trying to befriend a cat.

He’s quiet, sitting across from her, acting like he’s absorbed in the book he’s holding. She ventures a guess and says, “You want to ask me something,” which makes him stutter and stammer. She ventures another guess, “Probably about the collar.”

“Do you… I mean…”

Armin struggles to get the words out and Erna’s feeling like she’ll be there all day if she waits patiently. If she’s being honest, she doesn’t have much patience left. She’s used most of it dancing around with a fucking bell on her neck, acting like she doesn’t mind the very public humiliation of it, and trying to drive Levi insane enough to finally take it off of her, which is turning out to be a herculean task because she swears he is made of fucking stone. So she gets snippy with Armin. “Look, I’ll tell you a bunch of shit, just stop me if any of this is what you wanted elaboration on: apparently I’m a kitten, I have to keep this on as punishment for being difficult to find, and I’m spending most of my time right now trying to psychologically torture Levi with this,” she taps the bell setting it off ringing again to demonstrate.

And Armin has the gall to blush and ask her the very leading question, “Isn’t it humiliating?”

She’d been trying not to think about that part. It is the most humiliating thing ever. Behind closed doors humiliation is fine, great even, but she hates being humiliated in public. She likes for people to be at least a little fearful of her – just enough to be wary of her displeasure. It’s hard to make people wary of you with a cute little bell making music everywhere you go. Not to mention the public reminder that Levi can do whatever he wants with her within reason, which is true and she’s proud to be his property to some extent, but she’d rather it be between them privately and not be made so fucking obvious.

She asks him coldly, “Does it get you off if it is?” at which he flinches like she just jabbed him with a needle and he begins to stutter out an apology. She cuts him off. “I draw the line at you living vicariously through me. I like talking with you about this stuff in an honest and technical way, but you don’t get to wank over what happens to me.”

“I-I never.. I mean.. I wouldn’t..”

She’s set him off stammering again. She rolls her eyes at him. “I was being figurative. Relax.” That’s half a lie. She wasn’t being _that_ figurative, feeling about ninety percent sure that he goes back to his room and jerks off in a heady rush of guilt and self-loathing after most of their conversations.

They’re quiet for what feels like a long while.  Then Armin says comfortingly, “In BDSM collaring is sometimes a sign of deep commitment, almost like a marriage proposal.”

Erna snorts. “Yeah. I don’t think this is that.”

“I guess not.” He smiles. “Would you? I mean, if it was?”

Erna doesn’t think about marriage. She never has, even when she was at the age where planning a dream wedding was a normal thing for girls to do. At that point in her life she was a depressed little thing who didn’t even think much of surviving day to day, so weddings weren’t really in her imaginative repertoire. And at this point in her life it just doesn’t seem sensible.  “I think I’ll be dead before I ever get the chance.”

“I suppose that’s realistic,” he says quietly.

She hums and relaxes her neck, letting her head roll and looking up toward the ceiling and says to herself, “Morbid.” Then she smiles at him. “I don’t know why you even talk to me sometimes.”

“Well,” he muses, “It’s always interesting…” He lets her pretend to read her book for a minute, then he says, “I can’t picture you as a kitten.”

“Right?” she agrees. She doesn’t see herself as being cute enough to resemble a kitten. “I don’t know what I _would_ be though.”

“Definitely not a puppy…  And you’re too predatory to be a pony…” He muses, giving it some thought.

Erna looks up from her book smiling, happy to be thought of as predatory. “People pretend to be ponies?”

He smiles a little. “Yeah, with the bits and saddles and everything.”

Erna lets out a low whistle in amazement. She looks at him curiously for a moment, then asks, “Do you ever think maybe you know _too_ much?”

“I don’t think you can ever know too much.”

“If you say so.” She likes how much Armin knows and she wonders if she’ll ever get to hear all of what he knows. She goes back to looking at her book. Then she asks, “What would you be? I know you’ve thought about it.”

“I can never decide,” he admits. “Whatever my Dom wanted me to be, I guess.”

“I think you’re a puppy. You’re too eager to please to be any kind of cat. Too smart to be a horse.” She says matter of factly into the pages of her book. She doesn’t think much of petplay herself and doesn’t devote much thought to it. She likes being human well enough. What she does dwell on, without pointing it out, is that Armin used the ambiguous term “Dom” for the hypothetical rather than “Jean.”

Her answer makes Armin laugh. Erna likes that. She likes getting reactions from him that aren’t just his usual worrying, quiet contemplation. She likes the expressiveness of his face that shows everything like he has no capacity for guile, but she knows it’s there. She can feel there are darker things going on underneath that innocent exterior and she wants to see them. He makes her feel sadistic, which isn’t a completely new feeling. She’s always been a little emotionally sadistic and very fond of making people uncomfortable, Armin being the best target for that with how shy and easily embarrassed he can get. But she gets sadistic ideas in her head regarding Armin that are decidedly not emotional. Images of Armin wearing nothing but a collar and leash come to her mind and she imagines kicking him to hear how he yelps.

“I can picture you whining and barking like a puppy… and panting and begging for release with your paws in the air…” She likes to voice her sadistic thoughts directly to him and pretend that she doesn’t know what boundaries are or what is inappropriate. He blushes a deep red and he squirms slightly, but he lets her get away with it, he doesn’t tell her to stop. She has more ideas, but she pulls back and pretends to read her book again. She feels like he’s leading her to the edge of a cliff, like she’s the one in trouble, not him. 

She scrutinizes Jean more lately, looks at him differently. When he strolls into the library she tries to see what Armin might have seen. The cocky smirk, the way he tries to walk like he truly could not give a fuck, the feigned pride. She guesses that maybe if someone was too oblivious to see all of the deep insecurity and sensitivity underneath all that they could mistake him as having some potential for being dominant or sadistic. She wonders if Armin was naïve enough to think that he would really be sexually compatible with Jean or if he thought that normal, boring vanilla sex would be enough even with his massive masochistic submissive streak. She thinks that’s a stretch with how smart he is and how much he knows about how BDSM works. It must be something else. Something about romance or love or whatever that she’ll never really understand. Something had to make this massively insecure, ashen-haired asshole attractive to Armin.

Then he opens his fucking mouth and she decides that she’ll definitely never understand.

“Hey babe,” he coos at Armin, using that pet name that makes Erna nauseous, “Are you busy?”

Armin hums at him and closes his book. He turns around and looks at his amber-eyed boyfriend adoringly. “Not very. Why?”

“Just wanted to see if you wanted to hang out,” Jean tries to act casual and not like the overeager, romantic, blindly-in-love idiot that he is. Erna rolls her eyes and sticks out her tongue like she’s going to be sick. Jean sees her and glares at her over Armin’s shoulder.

She can’t stand it, because she knows that they’re just going to go back to their room and have barely satisfying sex. She can see it all over their faces. Jean is going to be gentle and adoring and worshipful of his sweet little Armin and Erna can’t help balling her fists jealously. It’s all wrong. Armin deserves to be punished and humiliated and treated like a worthless little object and made to submit to someone’s cruel whims. He needs his hair wrapped in a fist forcing him to his knees, not loving caresses. The whole idea drives her crazy. So she spits at Jean reflexively, “Fuck off, we’re having a conversation.”

Armin’s face pinches in visible discomfort and Jean sneers at her. “Why are you still wearing that thing?” he asks, obviously referring to her collar.

She doesn’t point out that she literally can’t take it off, because his tone implies that she should be ashamed about it, which contrarily makes her want to embrace it. “Because Levi wants me to,” she says proudly.

“So you just do whatever he wants even when it’s weird and embarrassing?” he scoffs.

“ _Especially_ when it’s weird and embarrassing.” She looks back to her book on the floor to drive home the point that she doesn’t think it’s anything worth being ashamed about. Jean remains standing behind Armin and doesn’t catch him looking sympathetically at Erna, almost apologetically.

“So fucked up,” Jean mutters to himself.

Erna takes in all of Armin’s discomfort and sees this as an opportunity. She asks, “What’s so fucked up?”

“Your whole…” he hesitates to use the word, “...relationship… with Levi. The bruises, the collar, everything. How can you think that’s healthy?”

“I like it,” she says. “Just because you don’t doesn’t make it fucked up.” Armin’s face is becoming more pinched. Erna thinks he looks like he might sob.

“That’s a laugh, Raban,” he switches to using her last name when he’s pissed, same way he does with Eren. He does so more often lately, getting annoyed with her more easily the more she monopolizes Armin’s free time. “Getting off on being beaten isn’t fucking normal and wanting to hurt someone isn’t love. You’re fucking brain damaged.” He reaches a hand down, offering it to help Armin up from the floor. Armin takes it hesitantly. If he looks distressed at all, Jean takes it as his usual discomfort with confrontation.

She wants more, wants to make him lose his temper, wants him to say something final and awful about her relationship or BDSM that will inadvertently hurt Armin. Erna keeps talking just to keep him from walking away until she can lead him where she wants him to go. “You’re brain damaged. You’re the one who suffered a severe concussion from one little headbutt,” she says, referring to the time she kicked his ass with her hands literally tied behind her back.

Jean takes a threatening step towards her, but Erna doesn’t budge from her seated position. Armin places a hand on Jean’s chest to coax him into controlling his temper. It stops Jean from doing anything stupid, but it doesn’t stop his mouth. He gestures to her collar. “You look like you should be stalking rats.”

“Jean...” Armin murmurs placatingly.

Erna narrows her eyes at Jean and says, “I’m stalking one right now.”

 “Jean, leave it alone,” Armin whimpers, pulling on his arm pleadingly.

“She fucking starts it,” he hisses, “She shoves her disturbing sex life in our faces and acts like it’s all normal as fuck.”

Automatically Erna counters with, “If I shove anything in your face it’s going to be my fist.”

Armin strokes Jean’s arm and tries to give him a gentle push in the direction of the hallway. “Jean, calm down. It’s just her preference, there’s no reason to be so narrow-minded about it.”

“How can you be okay with any of this?” Jean asks Armin in disbelief. “How would you feel if I hit you and made you wear a collar?”

Armin’s face turns redder than she’s ever seen and Erna grins, smugly satisfied that Jean doesn’t even know how deep he’s putting his foot in his fucking mouth. She tilts her chin haughtily as she slowly stands up. With a smirk, she tells Jean, “It’s called ‘petplay’ and it’s actually pretty fun.” She crosses her arms and cocks a hip. “I think Armin would be an adorable puppy.”

As Armin stammers and tries to hide his face by looking down at the floor, Jean’s features contort with rage. “You’re sick.”

She ignores the comment and goes on to say, “And you’d be a perfect horse.”

Jean finally relents to Armin’s persistent shoving and begins to turn away, draping his arm protectively around his boyfriend’s shoulder he says, “You shouldn’t hang out with her so much. What if her ideas rub off on you?”

Erna calls after them, “Yeah, don’t let me corrupt you, Armin!” and after they’re gone she cackles to herself.

* * *

 

 

When Levi gets out of his meeting and drags himself back to his apartment, stressed and mentally exhausted, his mood is immediately lifted a little upon opening the door to the sight in front of him. He smirks at Erna, his little kitten, on her knees scrubbing the floors in nothing but lacy teal underwear. For a second he thinks about getting the cat ears and tail from the bedroom and having some fun with her to ease his stress and reward her for actually taking the initiative to clean before he had to ask her to. But then she pushes the scrub brush across the floor with both hands, rolling and arching her back gracefully, and making the bell on her collar ring sweet and unceasing. He swears he can feel the tinny sound in his teeth, not to mention the pounding in his head. Any lustful violent urges he felt disappear immediately as he groans and peels off his boots.

She breaks her concentration to pick her head up and smile sweetly at him, but her mouth slackens and forms a little ‘o’ when she sees how beat he looks. She coos sympathetically, “Rough day?”

He hums at her and sits down. She crawls over to him, that damn bell tinkling the whole way. He really should just take it off of her, but that feels like a defeat and he doesn’t take those well. The whole punishment isn’t working out the way he’d planned. He thought that she would hate the collar and would be begging him to take it off in only a few hours. After that, he expected, he would catch her looking for the key giving him a good reason to punish her further. He definitely didn’t think she would leave the apartment with it on. He didn’t think she would turn out to be so fucking fond of the thing, and he never foresaw that the constant sound of that bell would drive him insane.

She rests her head in his lap and mewls at him, swaying her ass playfully like a cat. He wants to fuck the shit out of her lithe little body, but he would have to take the collar off first. His fingers twitch and almost move to take the key from the pocket of his jacket, but he stops. If he takes the collar off of her there’s a chance that she’s going to complain and ask why, and if he admits that he can’t handle the noise she’s going to gloat. And she’ll be right. And he can’t have that.

He closes his eyes and rubs his temples, ignoring her until the bell jingles again, accompanying her movement to nuzzle at his lap and playfully pull at the button of his pants with her teeth. He looks down to catch the spark in her eyes. Any other day, he thinks ruefully as his hand finds her hair and stops her from going further. When she pouts he says, “Too exhausted.”

She strains a little against his grip on her curls and whines. “You don’t have to do anything. Just let me suck you off. I want to choke myself on your cock.”

And if that silver little device of psychological torture weren’t murmuring high, tinny reverberations with her every movement as she struggles against his hand, he would have gotten hard with just those words. Unfortunately he can’t get it up when every nerve in his head is pounding. He lets go of her hair and tells her, “You can try, but it’s going to be pretty hard to choke on a limp dick.”

When she doesn’t go for his zipper again he looks down to catch her looking heartbroken. He knows what she’s probably thinking. “It’s not you. I’m actually fucking tired. Not everything is about you.”

She seems content enough with that and she goes back to scrubbing the floor. It’s too goddamn loud. Normally he would love watching her clean, but he has to leave the room. He goes to the bedroom and prays that she won’t follow him. Somehow, even with the door closed he can still hear it. He only finds silence when he lies on the bed and pulls a pillow over his head. He falls deeply asleep and stays that way for maybe fifteen minutes only to wake up feeling like shit. At least the ringing has stopped. He smooths out his clothes and clicks his tongue in annoyance. He’s literally never fallen asleep in his uniform. He stops himself, deciding not to bother, stripping the clothes off instead. He thinks a better idea is to take a hot shower before getting something from the dining hall and then harassing Erwin into giving him a glass of wine or a shot of scotch. A double shot… no, a triple shot… Fuck it, he’s just going to take the bottle and tell Erwin to fuck off.

* * *

 

 

Erna is very well ensconced in her own little world at dinner, not noticing any of the conversation going on around her. She was sure Levi was finally going to break and take off her collar. When he’d gotten back earlier he’d looked physically pained by the noise. Maybe she was mistaken and all of what she thought was being caused by her bell was actually the result of him being exhausted from work. He did go to the bedroom and take a nap after rejecting her offer of a blow job, two things that he’d never done before.

She thinks maybe she doesn’t have this as well figured out as she’d thought. She sighs and rests her chin on her hands, feeling foolish at how confident she’d been in her ability to manipulate him into ending her punishment early. Still, when she sees him enter the dining hall and stroll over to his table she starts tapping at the bell, just in case. Consistency is key.

She isn’t even sure he can hear it from that far off. Their tables are probably about seven or eight meters apart, and the din of everyone talking and eating probably drowns her little bell out. Stubbornness makes her keep at it anyway, never letting the ringing stop.

She keeps him in her peripheral vision, so she sees when he gets up from the table and crosses the crowded hall with a look of purpose and determination. She finds it a little curious and she watches him, muscles taut and jaw clenched as he pushes open the door to the kitchens with a stiff arm and disappears.

“Not hungry?” Sasha’s question distracts her from tracking Levi and anyway she can’t see him beyond the door. Before she can answer, Sasha is already stealing her plate and pulling it across the table.

Jean teases, “She’s waiting for a mouse.”

“Oh very funny, Kirschtein, you smug pri –,” she starts to respond, but before the final word comes out the side of her head smacks the table and is held there by a tremendous pressure. There’s screaming, there’s the crash of plates breaking, silverware clattering to the floor, the flash of a knife in the corner of her eye. A big knife. She’s been held down by him enough that she knows the feel of Levi’s hand pressing against the side of her skull, though from her vantage point she can’t really see him.

There’s a din of gasps, murmurs, shouts, and she thinks she hears Hanji yell, “Levi, don’t kill her!”

It feels like a nightmare because she kicks the bench away and tries to lift her head when fight-or-flight kicks in, but he’s too strong and she’s never felt so powerless. His fingers grip harder digging into her head and she can feel him straighten and stiffen his arm, leaning on her as he lifts the knife with his other hand. She pleads quickly and loudly in a panic, “Levi, wait, I’m sorry!”

“Tch. Hold still,” is the last thing she hears before the crisp slice of air and the thud of the knife.

She opens her eyes. She shouldn’t be able to do that since she’s dead. That’s her first thought, but then she’s very conscious of how deeply her chest is heaving and how loudly her heart is pounding. There is a heavy, stunned silence in the room and she doesn’t put it all together until her eyes focus on the little silver bell, rolling off the table and singing softly, falling in slow motion. It makes a dull rattle when it hits the stone floor. The pressure against the side of her head disappears. Levi’s fingers release the handle of the butcher knife that stays standing, embedded in the thick wood of the table only a fraction of a centimeter from Erna’s neck, its sharp edge gleaming in the light. Levi crushes the bell under his boot, grinding it into the stone floor until all it can make is a dull, scratching metallic sound.

Erna stands up, chest heaving, she stares at him wide-eyed as he squints angrily at the bell under his heel. When he’s done destroying it he lifts his head and looks at her like he doesn’t see what the big deal is or why she’s staring at him with such horror. His facial expression remains his calm, casual deadpan in stark contrast to the shocked, confused, frightened faces of everyone else.

Her heartbeat doesn’t cease its pounding. Adrenaline that now has no outlet courses through her veins. Between still-panicked breaths she says, “I need to fuck or fight something… right now.”

He simply shrugs and takes her by the elbow, saying, “Let’s go,” as he leads her out of the dining hall.

The electric charge and tension in the air leaves with them and slowly things are picked up, seats are retaken. People go back to eating and Sasha smacks her head on the table in frustration, wailing, “Can’t we just have one normal dinner?”

* * *

 

 Erna can barely contain herself, the near death experience being too much of a rush. She wants to fight, not out of anger, but just because her instincts tell her to. As soon as the apartment door closes and Levi releases her arm, she spins around and says excitedly, “I want to slap you. Can I?”

Levi laughs, for the first time that she’s ever heard. It’s a deep rich sound and she thinks it’s lovely and she would probably kill to hear it more often. It almost throws her off. But she crosses her arms, thinking there’s nothing to be amused about, and she says, “I thought you were going to kill me!”

“No,” he says, “I just couldn’t stand that goddamn bell for one more second.”

“If that’s the case, there were better ways to go about it!” She hooks a finger through the supple leather circling her neck. “Like you could have just fucking unlocked it and taken it off, you fucking psychopath!” She’s not really that angry, in fact she’s pretty gleeful that her plan worked and she was able to make him snap. She didn’t expect such a violent outcome, but now that it’s over and she’s not dead, she is grateful for the novel rush of adrenaline.

He shrugs. “I could have. Didn’t occur to me.”

“So can I fucking hit you?” she reiterates. She should get at least that.

“You really thought I was going to kill you?” he smirks at her.

“What the hell was I supposed to think? You held me down and swung a knife at me.”

“Tch. I had to hold you down so that you wouldn’t move. I didn’t want to cut you.” He’s still smirking, like he thinks her distress is amusingly cute. But he crosses his arms and tilts his chin up slightly. Finally he consents, “You get one. Make it count.”

She is shocked. Even though she really wanted him to give her permission, she never would have expected it. She’s unable to move until it sinks in that this is real. As she takes the two steps toward him she wrestles with the decision to put her full force into it or not. He said to make it count. She thinks she might regret not seeing how he’d react to a real hit, so she doesn’t hold anything back. When her palm hits his cheek it’s louder than she expected and the way he reels from it is so satisfying. It’s slight, but his head turns and his shoulder drops. His right foot steps back to catch his balance.

The satisfaction is only momentary as he’s on her in a flash, turning her away from him, fisting her hair and twisting her arm behind her back and lifting her wrist toward her shoulder blades until she’s sure it will break.  He bends her neck back so that she can only see the ceiling through watery eyes. “Now,” he hisses in her ear, his voice icy, “admit that you knew exactly what you were doing.”

_Never_ , she thinks. Her voice comes out thin and strangled at how far he has her neck bowed back, “What do you mean? Doing what?”

“Tch…”

He lets go of her hair and she can move her neck again. She rolls it, relieving the pain. She gets ready to drive her free elbow into him, hoping that it will make him let go of her wrist and stop the burning in her shoulder. Before she can collect herself to do so, he’s reaching down her leg and she can’t figure why until his fingers reach the edge of her boot. She tries to kick at him, but he twists her arm tighter and the pain interrupts any signals her brain could send to her legs or arms. With a fluid grace and speed completely unique to him, he takes the knife from her boot and brings it to her throat, making her go stock still.

It doesn’t hurt yet, but she can feel the pressure of the sharp blade poised and ready to cut her jugular vein. The metal is warm, heated from being against her calf all day. It never occurred to her that the knife she was so used to keeping in her boot could be used against her.

She is pretty sure he wouldn’t kill her, but there’s just enough of a sliver of doubt for her heart to quicken and for her breathing to get more frantic.

He keeps her arm pinned behind her back and he presses his hips against her, pushing her forward into the knife. Now it hurts. She makes it a habit to keep the edge razor sharp and she can feel the uncomfortable feeling of her skin being sliced just barely.

Levi is careful not to make a mess, only putting enough pressure with the blade of the knife against her skin to make a superficial cut, not enough to draw blood. This would be harder to enjoy with blood. The need to make it clean would distract him, and right now he doesn’t want anything in the way of enjoying the way her heart races when she’s afraid. He loves seeing that fight-or-flight response in her. Some animalistic part of him gets turned on by it and he wants to fuck her while she’s afraid, while her instincts are telling her that her life might be threatened. He pushes his hips against her again, the friction making his already hardening cock twitch, and he tells her exactly when she tipped her hand and he knew that she was using that bell to torture him on purpose. He tells her calmly, “You said you were sorry.”

Speaking slowly and being careful not to move, she says, “When did I –”

Before she finishes the question he tells her, “When you thought I was going to kill you. You said you were sorry.” He twists her arm a little more, up to the breaking point, threatening to go further. “So,” he tries again to coax the confession out of her, “what were you sorry about?”

She winces at the pain and the stupidity of her mistake. She lies through her clenched teeth, “I thought you were about to cut my fucking head off.” An involuntary whine leaves her lips as he puts more pressure on her arm, warning her to be careful. When she acclimates to the increased pain, she goes on, her voice breaking, “I was just saying things.”

He has to smirk at the pure stubbornness. He wonders how far he’d have to go to get her to admit it and if it’s worth actually breaking her arm. He already knows the truth whether she’ll say it or not; his pet is a proud, manipulative, and extremely clever little bitch and it was a naïve fucking mistake on his part to believe for a second that she wasn’t doing everything to drive him insane on purpose.

He makes his grip around her small wrist even tighter and her hand goes slack as he pinches the nerve. He lowers his voice to make it dark and threatening and he tells her, “You’re a bad fucking liar, Erna.” He has to resist the urge to rut against her again when he feels a shiver go through her whole body. “Last chance,” he warns. “What were you sorry about?”

He doesn’t really want to break her arm and he has no intention of doing so, but he wants her to think that he will. So when she pauses and doesn’t answer, he moves as if he’s going to pull hard enough to snap the bone and he revels in how she begins to hyperventilate. He’s so sure that she’s just about to break and sob out a confession that he’s caught completely off guard when all of a sudden her free hand shoots up and with pinpoint precision her fingers grab and press the bones of his hand hard enough to make him lose feeling in his fingers and drop the knife. He’s shocked even as she kicks the weapon away to slide underneath the couch. Then his instincts kick in and he goes to spin her around by the arm he’s still holding because he knows what her next move will be and if she’s facing him he’ll be better able to deflect it. But he’s a shade too late. Just as he tries to grapple with her, he’s stopped by the pain exploding in his knee from a backwards kick. _Fucking predictable_ , he thinks, and he’s that much more pissed that he was too slow, so he doesn’t check his force when he sweeps her legs out from under her and steps down on her clavicle the second she’s on her back.

He smirks at her disgusted expression at being knocked down. When she grabs at his boot to try to lift it, he simply applies more pressure, making her wince. The pain in her face makes him impossibly hard, pushing all of his sadistic buttons. He thinks he doesn’t mind her fighting back this one time as long as she keeps looking feral like she does now, a little wild-eyed and angry and fighting for her life.

He leans over her and gloats. “You weren’t kidding when you said you needed to fuck or fight something, huh?”

Erna’s mind is a blank. Too much adrenaline to think or respond to the question. She only snarls. The urge to bite and scratch and claw at him is there, but at the same time she wants him to keep pushing at her, hurting her, and she wants him to do something about the throbbing wetness between her legs. She brings her knees up and braces her feet against the floor, throwing her hips and using the force to rock his balance and get his boot off of her chest. She doesn’t waste the half second it would take to get to her feet, instead she grabs for his ankle to twist and hopefully cause enough pain to make him fall, but he sees it coming and dodges, stomping down on her hand when she misses.

Her shrill scream seems to echo in the silent room.

He lifts his boot and lets her gasp and nurse her possibly broken hand for a second or two. When he sees that she can still curl her fingers he gets back down to business, hooking his fingers through her collar and lifting her up so that she needs to stumble onto her feet. “That,” he says above her cries and whimpers, “was a bad idea.”

She waves the pain out of her fingers. He twists her collar a little, tightening it, ready to choke her with it, as he asks, “Do you want to keep going?”

He wouldn’t mind, honestly, if she did. He would be surprised if she could actually knock him down. Not as surprised as he is when she rolls her body against him and makes a keening, needy whine. He doesn’t have to ask what that means. She rocks her hips against his thigh and butts her head into his shoulder, panting like an animal. He smirks and lets go of the collar, pushing her back a little to look at him. He asks her, “Are you going to be good?”

Erna doesn’t even think about it. She answers honestly, “No.”

His lips curl into a cocky, smug grin like he’s mocking her for needing it so badly and losing control of herself at the threat of pain and death, but she can feel how hard he is and if anything, she thinks the right to gloat is mutual. To prove her point, she palms his cock through his trousers and twists his cravat in her fist, pulling him down into a bruising kiss, burning and full of animalistic desire, sucking and biting his lips red.

Levi raises an eyebrow at the forcefulness of the kiss, unused to his toy being so aggressive. He isn’t sure he likes it. When he goes to pull away after she takes a particularly hard nip at his lower lip, she only tightens her grip on his cravat and holds him still and that decides it for him; he definitely doesn’t like it. He bristles at her attempt to restrain him and lets out a low warning growl before gripping her waist and steering her to the nearest wall. She doesn’t let go of the cravat, but now it’s for balance more than dominance as she stumbles backwards. The moan she makes when her back hits the wall with a thud goes straight to his dick and it’s not just as simple as wanting to fuck her, it’s wanting to possess her and dominate her, wanting to claim her even through her willful fucking arrogance and all of the fight that’s still in her.

So when he kicks her feet apart to spread her legs and she has the gall to actually push him away seemingly in an effort to get some space between them so that she can hurriedly claw at the buckles of his 3dm harness? Any of his usual calm calculation goes out the fucking window. He flies at her, biting the junction where her neck meets her shoulder and holding her flesh in his teeth. His hands take each side of the collar of her soft v-neck tee and rend it, tearing it clean down the middle in two pulls. The ripping sound triggers something in her, he can feel it in the way her shoulder muscle tenses under his teeth, and then he feels it in her nails digging into the sides of his neck like she’s trying to tear him open. Instinctively he releases her from the bite and pulls back, but that only makes her scratch harder, above the collar, where he won’t be able to hide the marks, he realizes vaguely even through the haze of his frenzied lust.

Before he can grab her hands, she retracts her nails from his skin and applies them to his cravat instead, tearing it off and quickly transitioning to clawing at the buttons of his shirt. Lacking the capacity to deal with the buttons patiently she angrily wrests them apart, breaking off the ones that won’t pull freely through the buttonholes. Levi doesn’t mind, though. He’s intoxicated by the way her chest heaves when she’s panting heavily and growling. When the last button on his shirt is ripped off he pushes her back again, trying to enforce that her place is against the wall, and tears her bra off to assault those perky, creamy little tits with his mouth. She finally stills when he holds one of her sensitive nipples in his teeth, roughly tonguing at it. Her pause gives him a chance to remove his jacket and ruined shirt.

Erna whimpers at the threat of him biting down. Not many things hurt as much as when he bites her nipples, but for now he seems to just be holding her in his teeth so that she’ll give him a chance to slow down. She’d rather not, so once he’s shirtless she takes the opportunity to dig her nails into the hard edged muscles of his lower back and scratch all the way up to his shoulders, smiling and leaving puffy red lines in her wake. He hisses in pain at first, but then he growls as his teeth clamp down on her nipple and it stings like fucking crazy. Still, she thinks it was worth it and can’t stop smiling even as she’s throwing her head back against the wall and howling in pain. It doesn’t deter her from pressing her nails to the back of his neck again, ready to scratch, but he’s faster and he grabs her wrists, yanking them away before she can do any damage. He leaves her tits alone and stands up to his full height again, scowling at the mischievous grin she shoots him and twisting her around to face the wall, growling, “Little bitch.” He pushes her forward and orders her to, “Hug the fucking wall,” letting go of her wrists so that she can catch herself before her forehead connects with the stones.

Levi moves faster now, pushing her hard against the wall with one hand and pulling her hips back towards him so that she needs to lean on it for balance and won’t be able to escape and counter so easily. He still keeps one hand pressing hard between her shoulder blades to pin her in place as he rushes to pull her pants and underwear off, not an easy feat with her struggling to try and push away from the wall and turn herself around again, but he manages.

She fights less and purrs more when his fingers find her pussy. For a second she seems to melt and he’s able to relax the arm he was using to push her into the wall. He hooks it around her waist instead, bending over her and biting softly at the back of her neck as he coats his fingers in the dewy lubrication escaping her lips and he uses it to run his fingertips over her clit in slow, silky circles, pulling wanton moans from her sweet little mouth, making her arch her back. It isn’t very long, though, before she’s getting demanding again, canting her hips back and hissing, “Just fuck me, you prick.”

She yelps and growls like an animal when he slaps her ass hard as a response. He loves the resulting red that blooms over her skin, but he doesn’t do it again. He doesn’t have time to turn this into a spanking session; his cock is demanding that he get on with it. So he goes back to her cunt with his fingers, and if not for the persistent throbbing of his almost painfully erect dick, he could take all the time in the world playing with her thin, soft folds, penetrating her and stretching the warm layers to accommodate another finger. There are times when he can get lost in a trance with how amazed he is by her sweet, pink lips that throb, wet with juices, begging to be used, beaten, and raw. But right now the throbbing between his own legs is much too distracting. Right now he just needs to stretch her and open her enough so that he won’t need to go slow when he finally pushes his cock inside her.

She isn’t very grateful for the preparation impatiently pushing her hips back, arching her back, and hissing and spitting like an angry cat, “More… Harder… Give it to meee…” between frustrated groans.

When he thinks she’s ready enough he unzips his pants and taunts her. “You want it?”

He’s about to take off his boots so that he can fully remove his pants, but then she turns around and glares at him arrogantly, hissing, “Fuck me, old man.”

He gets that hard, dangerous look, like he’s about to teach her something about the consequences of words and she’s delighted at the possibilities there. She watches him pause mid-action and instead of taking off his boots, wasting no time, he opts to forcefully undo his belt and free his cock, leaving the boots on and only pulling his pants and underwear down as much as is needed.  He grabs her hip with one hand and lines himself up with the other. For a moment she feels like she’s won. Then he pushes forward, fully sheathing himself in her in one brutal thrust, hitting her cervix. A small shriek leaves her lips and she claws at the wall, mindlessly trying to pull herself up or away from the intensely uncomfortable pressure.

Levi smirks to himself and holds himself there, all the way inside her, he lets out something halfway between a laugh and a moan as he watches her writhe on his cock. He gloats at her, “I thought you wanted it.”

“Fucker!” she spits angrily. Finally she pushes herself up on her toes and relieves a little of the pressure that way, enough so that she can put together a short sentence. “Too.. nngh.. deep.”

“I’ll be sure..” he pulls out a little and drives back in with a grunt, “to be gentle with you then,” he deadpans.

“Don’t you fucking dare.” She growls at him and swipes her hand back behind her in what looks like an attempted scratch at his abs, but it’s too much of a reach and she misses. She smacks her palm to the wall again quickly, realizing what a bad idea it was to remove it as he picks up the pace and her head almost hits the wall. She lets loose a loud, “Fuck!” making Levi grin.

He doesn’t get gentle, he couldn’t even if he wanted to fight the urge to utterly ruin her. He can’t think about anything but marking her, claiming her, fucking her violently into submission. Over and over again he buries his cock into her tight wetness, his hips slapping her ass in a fast, frenzied rhythm.

But then the little bitch cries, “Fuck me harder.”

As if he isn’t already assaulting her little pussy as hard as he can. He’s growls, feeling somewhat fucking offended. He grunts and slams into her full force again, making her yelp and moan. A feral instinct takes over and he bends over her, clasping her slender neck in his hand, half-choking her for leverage every thrust, and sinking his teeth into the back of her neck, fucking her like an animal.

And in between gasps she demands, “Fucking… harder…”

“Tch… little bitch.” He stops fucking her altogether and spins her around, violently shoving her back against the wall and grabbing at her hips, bruising them with his fingers. He lifts her up and automatically her legs wrap around him, her hips already rolling, looking for friction, trying to grind against his cock. He pushes her back into the wall harder, pinning her there, trying to hold her still so that he can line himself up. Just as his head presses against her lips, she digs her nails into his back again, crossing over the still stinging red lines of recent scratches. The urge to fucking kill her shoots through him and he expresses it by stabbing into her with his cock as deep and hard as he can. It’s so fucking satisfying to watch the fleeting look of shock on her face. It makes turning her around worth it even though he’s sure his back is bleeding.

He’s beginning to pant and sweat as pressure builds up in his abdomen. He goes faster, racing towards his building release, his primal instincts telling him to mark her as quickly as possible. Just as he’s on the edge his head is jolted to the right, his left ear is ringing and his cheek stinging like hell. He can hardly believe it at first, but he’s certain, Erna just slapped him. He stops moving completely, the pressure that had brought him so close waning, and he growls at the interruption of his impending orgasm.

 “I _said_ to _fuck_ me _harder_ ,” she narrows her eyes at him angrily and slowly emphasizes every word.

The thought that she doesn’t know who she’s fucking with runs through his head as he calmly carries her – never pulling out of her tight little cunt – to the bedroom, the edges of his vision tinted a little red, feeling like he’s on the edge of a rage blackout. She hums and moans, probably thinking that he has something good in store for her, that he’s finally going to fuck her as hard as she wanted. He heads for the bathroom, planning to fill the tub and fuck her from behind while he holds her head underwater, but just at the doorway he stops, realizing that he doesn’t want to wait the few minutes it would take for the tub to fill with water.

He gets a better idea. She licks and sucks at his neck with an insane, feral affection, leaving bruises and teeth marks. He tolerates it while he sets her ass down on the windowsill near the bed, wrapping one arm around her waist and reaching up to open the window with his other arm. One stiff push and it’s open, the fresh night air making him feel that much more animalistic. One jolt with his hips and she’s nearly falling out of it, frantically clawing at his shoulders to hold herself up, and screaming at him.

“Levi –! Fuck!” She hits him and claws at him angrily.

He reminds her of the precarious position she’s in by unhooking his arm from her waist and letting her fall back. The wind almost gets knocked out of him with how tightly her legs suddenly clamp around his waist and he laughs a little, thoroughly enjoying her panic, the adrenaline, how tight she feels around his cock. She strains to keep her torso more or less upright with only her core muscles to help her fight gravity and he decides to help her out by gripping her neck in his hand, cutting off her air, but keeping her from falling as he fucks into her, losing more and more of the capacity to control himself with the way she yelps in fear as every thrust of his hips pushes her a little more out the window.

Erna’s heart feels like it’s going to explode out of her chest. The cold night air chills her burning skin and her thighs fucking ache with how hard they’re fighting to hold on. Her abdominal muscles strain, teetering on the point of exhaustion, and fighting to lift her up enough to reach for something and pull herself back inside. At the same time the way Levi is looking at her like he wants to kill her and claim her sets off a tingling in her spine and a tight, pooling heat in her abdomen. Not even the danger of falling to her death can distract from how good his cock feels fucking her at a frenzied, hard, fast, and uneven pace while he chokes the air out of her.

Her one hand finds his hair and pulls hard, so he lets go of her neck and slams his hips into her, pushing her ass just an inch further out and off the windowsill. Instinctively she lets go of his hair and grabs for something more solid, catching the window frame and trying to dig her fingers into the wood. He’s going to have bruises where her thighs are clamping down on him with all the force of someone fighting for their life.

His hips keep moving, fucking into her at a punishingly fast pace, his primal urges telling him to bury his come in her as deep as he can. The expression on her face is a confused mix of ecstasy, anger, and panic. She spits at him, “You fucking.. psycho!”

So he leans forward a little and bites down on her hand, to show her how much more psychotic he can be, not letting up until her fingers are forced to let go of the window frame. Finally she drops, too fucked out to muster the strength to hold herself up anymore, relying completely on him to dig his fingers into her hips hard enough to keep her from falling down three stories to the ground. “I thought you wanted it harder,” he crows sarcastically as he keeps fucking her, each thrust pushing her a tiny bit further.

He doesn’t pay much attention to her response, completely losing the capacity to think or listen as pressure coils in his abdomen again and finally explodes. He reaches down, hooking an arm around her waist and pulling her up, holding her tight against his chest as his cock twitches and his balls empty inside her, pressing his head to her shoulder, panting and grunting raggedly. He falls to his knees and crumples to the floor completely spent.

She, however, looses herself from his grip, swipes a pillow off of the bed nearby, and begins pummeling him and calling him all kinds of creative things. He simply protects his face with a forearm and waits for her to finish. As his senses slowly come back to him, he thinks he can’t blame her if she’s pissed off, but she’s laughing in between shouting at him, so she can’t be that angry.

“You dirty motherfucker!” she laughs as she hits him one last time, her arms finally tiring out and dropping the pillow.

He moves his arm away from his face and gives her a cheeky look. “You fucking loved it.”

She doesn’t deny it, but she makes a disgusted groan and rolls her eyes at his immaturity. All she can say is “What the fuck?” meaning in a general sense, _what the fuck was any of that?_

“I don’t know. Something happens to me when you fight like that.” Levi is still trying to catch his breath. He feels like he could fall asleep on the cold stone floor. “You don’t corner the market on crazy.”

She did like it. She won’t admit it, but even when she was afraid that she’d fall out the window it was fun and she’d needed it. She feels more content now, kind of tired, and well-fucked. She pushes Levi’s hair away from his face and gazes at him adoringly for a second. She moves to lie down on the floor next to him and cuddle, but as she goes to do so she feels a warm wetness between her legs and jolts back upright disgusted, shouting at him again, “And you fucking came inside me!” She makes an exasperated sighing sound at him. “Goddamnit!”

“Sorry,” he calls after her as she stalks off toward the bathroom to clean up, smirking to himself and not feeling even a little sorry. “I wasn’t thinking… about anything… at all…”

He hears her groaning, “Gross…” and then she yells from the bathroom, “If I get pregnant I’ll _kill_ you.”

He thinks he’d kill himself first. He’d be a shitty father. He yells back to her, “Hanji has something for that. Just go see her in the morning,” he yawns. “You’ll be fine.”

When she’s apparently done she comes back out and stands over him, hands on her hips, looking very severe. “Don’t do it again.”

He props himself up on his elbows. “Don’t slap me again and I won’t.” If she hadn’t gotten so aggressive he wouldn’t have lost his head. He thinks she can shoulder the blame for the whole thing.

She bends at the waist, bringing her face closer to his and narrowing her eyes, “Don’t hold me down and swing very large knives at me if you don’t want to get slapped!”

“I’ll try not to,” he says just as angrily.

She grabs his arm and pulls him up, urging him towards the bed, which he’s grateful for. He sinks into the mattress heavily and she follows, wrapping her arms and legs around him, more affectionate and cuddly than usual. He enjoys the clinginess. Before he drifts off, he says quietly, sleepily, “Admit that you were purposely driving me insane with the bell.”

She nuzzles at his neck and murmurs, “Never.”

 


	26. Finer Detail Analysis

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This was bound to happen.

That day starts off the same as any other day. Erna eats breakfast with her friends, they tease each other and give each other shit. She drinks her coffee, goes out to the field, shares a stolen carrot with her horse.

And it would have been just the same as any other day if she hadn’t made one fatal mistake early in the morning, before dawn even fully broke.

 

She isn’t aware of her mistake yet. Right now she’s still blissfully unaware that she miscalculated so badly that her life is about to change drastically. So she combs Raven’s forelock with her fingers while the horse snatches a piece of carrot from her open palm.

 

Once the carrot is gone, Raven tries to kick Erna, but it doesn’t land even though she barely makes an effort to dodge. The violent dark bay doesn’t really try to kill Erna like she used to. Now she seems to only go through the motions out of habit, like she kicks because that’s the only thing she knows to do to tell Erna, ‘I don’t feel indifferent about you yet.’  Once she’s done her half-hearted kick, her nose goes back down to the grass and her teeth start tearing at it aggressively. She’s never grazed peacefully like other horses. Erna smiles at the scene for a moment and then tells the horse, “You better not start getting soft on me.”

 

Raven pins her ears back and throws her head in warning as Erna approaches her with the saddle, but it’s all for show. She doesn’t do anything but go back to grazing while the small girl tacks her up. She waits until Erna is mounted up and then she throws some leaps and bucks, but Erna just sits deep in the saddle and waits for the temper tantrum to be over.

 

She weaves through grazing horses until she reaches the herd’s edge. Once there’s room, she urges Raven up to a gallop and runs along the wall encompassing the castle. When she gets to her strategically chosen spot, she dismounts and unburdens her horse of her saddle and bridle and props them against the wall. As soon as the bit is out of her mouth, Raven roughly shoulders Erna out of the way and runs back to the herd.

 

Erna does a visual check to her left, to her right, behind her, and then, before using her 3DMG to fly to the top, she checks for soldiers on lookout scanning the landscape beyond the wall for signs of approaching titans.

 

Because she’s so careful.

 

When she’s sure that she can’t be spotted she maneuvers up, over, and down the wall quickly without pause. The faster she is, she thinks, the less likely it is that she can be caught.

 

And then she’s free. There’s open space in front of her, and somewhere there are titans. Somewhere there’s a place that she’ll turn into a killing ground, honing her skills on her own without the distraction of signal flares or lives to save. Just her and the quiet in her head that only comes when there’s enough danger to necessitate the shutdown of unnecessary logic and planning and second thoughts to make more room for swift and decisive action.

 

Her heart thrums. She smiles. She treasures her secrets like an addict, knowing that what she’s doing is wrong but loving it and never even considering that she should stop.

 

* * *

 

 

It happens that morning when he’s getting ready.

 

Levi always wakes up before her, and for some reason she always wakes up, without fail, while he’s in the shower, so that when he comes out she is laying on top of the covers expectantly, propping her chin up in her hands, feet lazily swaying in the air, and staring. He used to tease her about it being creepy, but really it’s flattering that his body can hold her interest so steadily.

 

She’s told him that this is her favorite part of the whole day. He assumed at first that she meant seeing him naked and clean after his morning shower until she told him that it’s actually the opposite – that she thinks she likes watching him get dressed even better than she likes staring at his naked body. He would almost be insulted, but he can see her point. Watching someone get ready in the morning is more intimate, so he lets her stare and he doesn’t tease her anymore about being creepy.

 

She’s staring at him while he puts his shirt on and her eyes tick downward with each button his fingers close. He doesn’t look at her, he just knows because he can feel it.

On the last button she asks, “Are you busy today?”

 

“Very,” he answers, tucking his shirt into his uniform pants and grabbing a brown, leather belt. He looks at her and asks, “Why?”

 

Careless and sing-songy she says, “No reason.”

 

A combination of things happen in that moment that needle at him for the rest of the day.

 

Because her response alone was a little off. Because there was always a “reason.” Because the way she said it made it sound like she wanted him to be busy all day. Because she had been staring at his fingers clasping the buckle of his belt until she spoke and just for a split second he caught her eyes looking past him before returning to stare at him as he got dressed.

 

Because when she went to the bathroom to brush her teeth, he turned around to check out the spot behind him that he’d caught her glancing at, and the only thing there was her maneuver gear.

 

He lets it go, or he thinks he does.

It’s obvious that he hasn’t when he’s in a meeting and missing everything Mike is saying about emergency evacuation contingency plans because he’s rationalizing to himself that she was probably just thinking about doing more 3D maneuver training. But then why wouldn’t she just say that? Mike has to say his name twice to get his attention. Hanji teases Mike that his speech was so boring it put Levi into a trance, and then she insists that emergency evacuation isn’t going to be a thing because everything is going to go perfectly because she is in charge.

Levi rolls his eyes and says, “Yeah, like the first time you captured a titan to experiment on. That went perfectly.”

 

Her shoulders slump and she tells him to shut up.

 

When they break for lunch he takes his tea to the apartment, hoping that she’s there, but knowing, somewhere in the back of his mind that she isn’t. He checks the bedroom for her maneuver gear and finds that it’s missing too. That’s when he rakes his fingers through his hair and shakes his head.

 

He wants to give her the benefit of the doubt. He stands there and he really tries to.

But he’s always been a suspicious and distrustful son of a bitch.

 

He grabs his own maneuver gear, skips his tea, leaving it untouched on the coffee table, and he walks quickly back to Erwin’s office. He tells him that he won’t make it to the rest of the meeting.

 

“Is something wrong?”

 

“Yeah,” Levi answers, because that’s his gut feeling, but he goes back on it. “Maybe,” he says, and then promises, “I’ll let you know.”

He almost doesn’t want to go to the training grounds, because he knows that when he sees that she’s not there it’s going to hurt. And it does.

 

His team is there, training as dutifully as ever thanks partially to their conscientiousness and mostly thanks to Mikasa who could be a goddamn good squad leader if she could temper her narrow focus to encompass more than just Eren and his well being. Levi beckons her down from her maneuver practice, because she’s the most trustworthy. She lands in front of him with a sort of straightforward artlessness. Her maneuvers are always like that, efficient and without any grace or fluidity, because those things are impractical. She salutes him, her face the picture of calm self-confidence.

“At ease, Ackerman.”

 

She lowers her fist from over her heart, but no matter how many times he says it, she never looks at ease. He thinks she might actually not know how to relax, which is fine with him. He thinks the rest of his squad could stand to relax a little less too.

“Have you seen Erna?”

 

“At breakfast.”

 

He rolls his eyes at the obvious. “And since then?”

 

“No, Sir.”

 

“Tch.” That’s what he expected. Expecting it doesn’t mitigate the anger that wells up. He tells her, a little sharply, “Get back to work. Don’t let those shitheads slack off.”

He thinks about the other day when Erna was nowhere to be found, even after he sent out five or six recruits to look for her. She’d said she had been with her horse. “Pain in the ass,” he mutters to himself as he starts to walk the half mile distance to the area where the horses usually graze.

 

If it was a lie, he thinks, it was a smart one. The Survey Corps keeps hundreds of horses. At least one for each soldier and extras for pulling carts or replacing injured horses. When they’re not working, they’re left alone during the day to graze wherever they see fit, which is normally far away from the work going on around the castle. So if that’s where she was, then it isn’t a stretch that people would have had a hard time finding her.

He lets out a frustrated groan when he reaches the edge of the herd. Just because he doesn’t see her right away doesn’t necessarily mean that she isn’t there somewhere, but fuck him if he has time to walk through horse shit looking for her.

He walks around the edge of the herd and past it, towards the wall. The plan is to get up there and get a better vantage point. As he makes his way towards the high stone wall, he wonders what the fuck he’s doing. He almost doesn’t want to find her. Because if he gets to the top of that wall, looks down, and sees her sitting in the grass watching her horse graze, it means that he’s a suspicious asshole who can’t even trust one of the only people who has never given him any reason to do otherwise. It means that he walked all over the grounds of these headquarters just to prove to himself that he’s still a cynical dick who probably doesn’t deserve all the love and unquestioning trust that Erna puts in him.

So he stands at the base of the wall for a second, wondering if he wants to do this at all or if he should just go back to his meeting.

Then, out of the corner of his eye, he sees a dark spot further down the wall, far enough away that he can only just barely see it sticking out of the grass and resting against the stone. He walks towards it and after a couple of minutes he’s close enough to make out the shape and some detail. It looks like a saddle leaning against the wall. When he reaches it, he’s a little confounded as to what to make of it.   

 

He can’t even be sure it’s hers. All the Survey Corps tack is standard issue and looks exactly the same. There is one way, he thinks. He squats down and pulls one of the stirrup leathers out straight. It’s set to a length of only about thirty-eight inches. Anyone of an average height would look like a jockey riding that short, but it’s a good length for Erna’s legs.  

 

He looks around for any sight of her. She could have ridden out and untacked her horse to go graze. There’s no guessing where she would be by now.

 

Levi isn’t sure what he wants to find anymore. Why did he even come out here? Because of a look? Because of a feeling?

 

He uses his maneuver gear to propel himself to the top of the wall. He’ll spot her on the ground, wasting time with her crazy horse, he’ll feel like an asshole, and go back to his meeting.

 

Sense perception is a funny thing in humans, because they have brains that stubbornly reach towards logic even when their senses are giving them information that goes against anything logical. So when Levi hears the thud of a hook piercing stone and the swish of a 3DMG cable coming from behind him, his brain doesn’t act on the information and make him turn around right away, instead it tells him to look around the area inside the wall for the source of the sound.

 

Because nobody would be outside the wall.

He sees nothing, so he turns around toward the direction of the sound of a reeling steel cable. It’s on the other side of the wall, a little to his left, and he walks toward it as his brain tries to make sense of this situation.

She almost smacks right into him. She would have knocked him over if he’d made it to the edge of the wall at just the right moment. Instead, there she is, facing him directly.

 

“Erna.”

 

The surprise, hurt, and betrayal he’s feeling doesn’t come through his voice. He trained himself a long time ago to keep his feelings hidden, especially at their most intense.

 

Shock and horror blooms over her face. He didn’t know her eyes could get that wide.

In a fraction of a second his brain puts all the pieces together, starting with the sudden interest she took in anatomy months ago all the way up through her cagey avoidance of him last week and everything in between that didn’t seem worthy of note until this moment.  

  
Instinctively she takes a step back. She loses her footing and he has to grab the leather strap over her chest to save her from tumbling backwards off the wall.


	27. Regret and the Human Animal

Erna wants to scream, but no noise will come out. She can only stare wide-eyed at Levi's grim expression. When she realizes that she's lost her footing and she's falling off the wall, she yelps, but it's uncertain if it's at the fear of falling or at his hand fisting her harness and violently pulling her back toward him.

"What were you doing?" Levi asks through clenched teeth.

"I was…" She wants to tell him the truth. She's going to tell him the truth. But she also wants to stall while she tries to figure out the best way to frame the truth so that it won't sound as bad as it actually is.

He gives her another second to respond, but she still pauses to search for the best words, and he's done waiting. "Let me tell you what it looks like you were doing," he says, his voice distressed and strained with the effort it takes to remain sounding calm, "It looks like you went outside the wall on your own with nothing but your maneuver gear."

She winces, which is all he needs to know that he is right. He lets go of the death grip he has on her harness in disgust and he looks away.

Erna feels crushed under the regret she feels. For the first time she thinks about what this must look like. It's like Eren said, it's suicidal. At least, it looks that way. For the first time she's ashamed of herself. She thought that how Levi would feel when he found out didn't matter because he wasn't going to find out. She realizes now what a shitty reason that is for doing something that would hurt him, how callous and selfish and awful.

They're both silent for seconds that drag on forever as she wonders what she could say that would make it better.

"You're shaking."

She realizes that he's right. She can't stop. It's the fear making her do it – fear at herself, fear that she's hurt him irreparably, fear that he hates her, fear at what happens next.

"I'm sorry," she squeaks out through her constricted throat. It already feels raw though the tears haven't started flowing yet.

He considers her standing there. As he looks her up and down his face softens until he looks like he's sorry too.

She doesn't see, because she can only look at the wall underneath their feet. Suddenly his arms are around her, holding her tight against him. One shocked, miserable sob is wrenched out of her and muted against his chest.

She can't stop shaking.

He rests his chin on her hair, circles an arm around her waist and presses a hand between her shoulders. He wonders quietly, "What in the hell were you doing?"

She brings her hands up to his chest and pushes against him a little to gain the space she needs to look him in the eye when she answers, "I was killing titans," and before he can ask her, she follows up with, "I've been doing this for months. I'm sorry."

"Why the fuck would you do something so stupid?"

"I just," her voice is high and her vocal chords are getting tighter. "I don't know what I'm doing." She hides her face against his collarbone in shame. "It's so stupid. I'm so sorry," is all she can say over and over again as tears wet her cheeks.

She can feel his chest rise and fall with deep breaths. She feels his cheek press against her hair like he needs to be comforted just as much as she does. It's not what she would normally expect. She'd think he would be angry, because until now it never occurred to her to think of how afraid he might be of losing her. How cruel it must seem that she would deliberately put herself in danger when he has to deal with the fact that she could die on any expedition. Quickly it's sinking in that he isn't angry, he's hurt, and she hurt him. It's not something she's ever dealt with before. She's made people angry, she's made people uncomfortable, she's hurt people physically, those are all things she knows, but she's never hurt anyone emotionally. She's never hurt anyone she cared about as much as she cares about him. The guilt of it feels like a punch in the gut. Her arms encircle him and in her head she begs the universe to make him forgive her, to give her a second chance to take it all back and do things right and not hurt him with her selfishness.

"I'll never do it again. Please don't hate me."

"I don't hate you," he says calmly and evenly, like he's too tired anymore to be expressive, but when he tilts her head up to look at her his eyes look sad. "Why would you… a thousand dead titans aren't worth losing you."

Erna smiles a little, momentarily relieved that he isn't angry, and she jokes, "Well I only killed twenty-five."

"Erna," he says under his breath. His brow knits in confusion, "Do you think your life is that unimportant?"

It's a logical question, because why else would someone do something so risky? Unfortunately her reasoning isn't half that good.

"It's not that," she says, and she brushes the hair away from where it falls in front of his face when he looks down at her. She cards her fingers into the smooth blackness of it as something wells up in her chest. "I just… I wanted to feel the way I do on expeditions."

Her explanation doesn't help to remove the confusion from his face. She admits to herself that she wouldn't understand either if she were him. It doesn't always make sense to her either, but she tries to make it clearer. "I only feel right when everything is fucked. I'm no good when things are okay. I don't know what to do with 'okay'. I know what I'm doing when I'm surrounded by danger, I'm good at that."

He looks like he understands now, but he still looks sad, and tired.

He says, "You're sick, Erna." And he doesn't say it in a judgmental way, but more like she actually has a life-threatening physical illness.

She frowns, the corners of her mouth getting tugged down by the sinking feeling in her gut. Her fingers disentangle themselves from his hair and her hands fall to her sides heavily like she can't feel her arms anymore.

He holds her with his eyes and says, "It's not your fault."

But she won't let him take that away from her. It is her fault and she feels sorrier than she ever has and she wants him to know that. She presses her forehead to him again because it's so hard to look at him. "I was selfish."

He hums in agreement.

"I wasn't thinking about how you would feel. I thought it was okay because you'd never find out."

"Well I did," he says. "But I'm glad I found out this way."

She starts shaking again, realizing what he means, and not having the emotional strength to think about the other way he could have found out. She denies the possibility of it by insisting, "I would have been fine."

"You don't know that, Erna," now his voice is getting louder, more frantic. "All it takes is one variant –" he cuts his own thought off. Neither of them want to think about it. "Don't do it again. Ever," he sighs.

"I won't," she promises. "Even if I think I'd be safe."

"What if you did die? I'd never know what happened to you. Do you know what that would do to me?"

Tears well up and pool at her eyelids until she can't see anything but blurs of color, because she is horrible and doesn't deserve him. And she definitely doesn't deserve his love or understanding. She almost wishes he were angry. He would be justified in hating her. It would be awful, but it would feel right and maybe it would feel better than this sympathetic understanding that makes her feel like a monster.

They stand there together for a while in silence. They wait for the intense emotions to die down. It takes some time for her to stop crying.

When it feels okay to return to the real world outside their personal crisis, he turns to look at the castle behind him. He lets out a deep sigh and he sits down on the wall, gently pulling her next to him. They both look out over the scenery, seemingly tranquil with horses grazing and soldiers going about daily chores and mundane, repetitive maintenance tasks. It's comforting that the world didn't stop with them in the past few heart-rending moments.

Levi sighs regrettably as he tells her, "You've put me in a really shitty position."

She says, "I'm sorry," again, but it doesn't feel like enough. She can't think of anything else to say, but it isn't enough.

"I either have to tell Erwin about this and go along with however he wants to deal with it, or pretend that I don't know shit and it never happened."

It isn't even up for question in her mind. "I don't want you to lie for me. You have to tell him."

"Erna…"

She has to implore, "Your job comes first. Don't ever make bad choices just to save my ass."

He holds her hand, lacing his fingers through hers. He examines them for a moment. She wonders if he's focusing on the dirt under her nails or if it's something else.

"I don't know what he'll do," he says. "And I can't really help you."

She hums. It's okay with her. She deserves whatever. She doesn't want him to help her. He's already been kinder than she ever had a right to expect. She wants to take her punishment, maybe that will alleviate the guilt.

They go back to the ground together and as they walk back toward the castle, she asks him, "Am I really sick?"

"Yeah," he says, "but you can get better."

Her insides go cold and feel like they're going to fall out of her when they get to the door of Erwin's office. She feels dizzy and suddenly incredibly tired, like her brain is trying to put her to sleep in order to avoid what's coming.

Levi addresses the guard stationed at the door to make sure no one interrupts the meeting with, "Oi. Fuck off for a while."

"Um… Captain –"

"That's an order."

The woman standing guard salutes him without argument and walks away. When she's all the way down the hallway and rounding the corner, Levi opens the door and Erna follows him in.

Hange, Mike, and Erwin are in the middle of a conversation. They don't stop to acknowledge Levi until he tells them, "Meeting's over."

"Huh?" Hanji raises her eyebrows.

Levi looks past her to Erwin and says, "I need to talk to you."

Erwin takes in the severity in Levi's voice and the contrite, pensive look on Erna's face and he knows better than to ask if it can wait. With a wordless nod he dismisses Hange and Mike. Erna keeps her eyes down on the floor, and is especially careful to not look at Mike as he walks by.

When the door is closed, Levi doesn't wait for Erwin to ask what's wrong, doesn't preface it with anything, he just goes ahead and says, "Erna's been going outside the wall."

She winces. She had hoped there would be more easing into it than that. She feels her face burning red and she waits.

There's a tense silence until Erwin says, "I'm sorry, what?"

"You heard me right," Levi assures him. "It's exactly what it sounds like."

And then there's more silence, which fills Erna with more dread than if there were a sudden burst of angry yelling. Silence means that Erwin is thinking, which can't be good for her. When she can't take the suspense anymore, she looks up. Erwin's blue eyes stare directly back at her and they're blazing. His lips are pressed into a firm line. When he speaks it's like low rumbling thunder. "Sit down, Erna."

She's grateful for the command because her legs didn't feel like they were going to hold out anyway.

"How?" he asks.

"I used my maneuver gear to get over the wall, then I walked…" she doesn't know how much more explanation is required. "I was killing titans… for maybe three or four months…"

"Did anyone else see you?"

"No," she pauses briefly, then adds, "There's a blind spot in the lookout rounds."

Erwin folds his hands over his desk and looks down as if he's deep in thought or just trying to compose himself so as to not lose his temper. There's that deathly silence that sucks the breath out of Erna. Finally he says, "Does anyone know?"

"No," she tries to say with conviction, because she isn't selling anyone out. This is her problem alone.

"You're absolutely sure?"

"I'm sure," she says. Levi hasn't moved. He's still standing, somewhere behind her chair. She can't see him anymore, but she thinks she can feel his discomfort and she hates herself for doing this to him.

"Because if you're not sure," Erwin's voice is deep and quietly booming, "It could cost me everything."

Erna looks up for the first time since casting her eyes down towards her knees. She doesn't understand how her actions could have repercussions as serious as what Erwin is suggesting. He can see her confusion and it seems to infuriate him more. "Do you know what would happen if anyone found out about this?"

She shakes her head.

"You'll be arrested by the Military Police, you'll sit in a jail cell for months before they try you for attempted desertion – because that's what this looks like. At best I'll be discredited as a leader and the Survey Corps will start over again from the beginning in terms of respect and validity. At worst, I'll be dishonorably discharged for covering it up."

Tears burn her eyes.

"Do you know the penalty for desertion, Erna?"

Levi finally speaks up. "She's scared enough, Erwin."

But Erna doesn't hear him. She squeaks out so small she can barely hear herself, "Firing squad…"

Erwin is looking past her now, talking to Levi. "She isn't scared enough. If she were scared enough she never would have done something so foolish."

"She has PTSD."

Erwin stands up suddenly. "So do you! So does Hange! So does everyone who's survived this long!"

Erna winces and shrinks in on herself, because he's roaring now. She's seen him angry before, but she's never seen Erwin lose an ounce of control.

"Yeah," Levi says, unimpressed, "I clean, Hange blows shit up, and about a hundred others put themselves in risky situations like Erna did."

"I'm well aware of the complication in mental health overall within my ranks, Captain," Erwin says bitterly. "But risk-seeking behavior more commonly manifests as," he lifts a hand from the desk and raises a finger as he recites each item as if from a textbook, "casual and anonymous sex, impulsively picking fights, excessive drinking…" He pauses, long enough for Erna to hazard a glance up from the floor. When he catches her eyes he continues more quietly but no less enraged. "Nobody, as far as I know, takes it upon themselves to go on rogue missions, alone, with only a fraction of a chance of survival."

"I'm sorry."

Erwin seems to calm down. He sighs. "PTSD I can handle, Erna." He takes his chair again. "But I have no use for a soldier who goes off on their own will."

Suddenly, Erna is struck with the realization that, instead of the firing squad, she might simply be asked to leave. Of all of the consequences, that one had never occurred to her. She'd never heard of it happening to anyone. For her, life without the Survey Corps is something too horrible to even contemplate. Through a fresh flood of tears she pleads with desperation, "It will never happen again, I swear. I don't have anything without this. Please don't make me leave. I'd rather be executed."

"Fortunately for you, there might not be a choice. If I discharge you, it needs to be put up to review and when the reason for letting you go comes out, the military tribunal will probably want to make an example of you."

Erna begins sobbing uncontrollably, wailing, and he lets her for a while, until finally Levi puts a hand on her shoulder and tells Erwin, "That's enough. Stop fucking with her."

Erwin fixes a stony gaze on him and says evenly, "What if I'm not?"

Levi doesn't get flustered. He rolls his eyes. "I wouldn't have told you if I thought there was any chance you'd do what you're supposed to."

Erna's sobbing diminishes to sniffling. Bewildered, she wipes her face on the sleeve of her jacket and looks at each of the men in confusion. Levi and Erwin stare at each other like she's not even there, as if they're locked into some kind of contest.

Eventually, Erwin concedes, breaking eye contact with Levi, softening his jaw, and telling Erna, "You're very lucky that I don't like the higher ranks getting involved in my business."

Erna's mouth opens a little and she stutters, "So I-I'm… you're…"

"I'm dealing with this in house." He opens the top drawer of his desk and takes out a key. "But I want you to remember that if not for my own aversion to blind authority, you'd be court martialed without a second thought."

It takes Erna a second to absorb what he means, but when it sinks in she is frantic with relief. "Thank you! I won't – I'm sorry… a-and thank you!"

Erwin, seemingly unmoved by all of the emotion, opens one of the filing drawers at the side of the desk and pulls it out. He pages through the tabs of hundreds of thin folders until he finds the one he is looking for. He tosses it onto the desktop, opens it to a certain page, and slides it across the desk to her. All he says is, "How many?"

"Huh?" she says, perplexed.

With one of his large fingers, he taps at an outlined box filled with hash-marks positioned a third of the way down the page. The top left corner of the box says 'Solo Kills'.

She realizes that he's pulled her file. She cringes, not liking the idea of recording and making official this event that she is now so thoroughly ashamed of. She'd rather it be secret and forgotten. But Erwin doesn't budge in waiting for an answer.

Hesitantly and full of guilt she says begrudgingly just above a whisper, "Twenty-five."

Erwin is taken aback for a moment, but it's only a flicker of a reaction before he makes his expression stony and serious again. He hands her a pen. As she adds lines to the allotted space in groups of five, he asks, "In four months?"

"Three or four." She isn't sure. She was barely keeping track of time. Keeping track of kills was easy. Something that terrifying is hard to forget. Of the seventy-eight collected marks in her file for titans killed solo and in-team, she can remember vividly every single one. She sets the pen down carefully, unsure of what comes next.

Erwin clears that up for her as he takes the file back and closes it. "For a start to the many consequences of your actions, you can go to Hange first thing tomorrow morning for interrogation." He puts the file away and looks back to her meaningfully. "You will tell her everything you've learned, no matter how insignificant."

Erna keeps herself from groaning outwardly, but her dark, sardonic sense of humor makes her want to ask if the whole firing squad thing is still off the table.

"After that, you'll be meeting with Mike since he's the closest thing we have to a psychologist. Learn some better coping strategies than going off half-cocked into one of most dangerous situations I've ever heard of."

"Yes, Sir," she says contritely. "I'm sorry, Sir."

"You could stand to be more sorry," Erwin responds coolly. "Which is where the rest of your punishment will come in. Unfortunately I've never had to deal with insubordination like this and I'm honestly at a loss for an appropriate penalty. Then there's still the need to keep this quiet, so it can't be anything overt or obvious."

"Soo…"

"So you two act like none of this happened and I'll let you know when I come up with something. You're dismissed."

Erna is stunned. She makes no move to leave until Levi pulls her up by her arm and steers her toward the door and into the hallway. Once she seems to be okay to walk on her own, he lets go of her upper arm and keeps walking. Erna falters only a little before hopping to keep up with him again. "Is that it?" she asks, because she can't believe it.

"For now, yeah."

"But don' t I… I mean… I thought, um…"

"You thought you'd be in more trouble?"

She sighs, relieved. "Yeah."

"You don't know him that well then," Levi says as he keeps walking. By now it's getting late and they're sporadically passing by soldiers finishing up tasks or getting a head start towards the dining hall for dinner. "You forgot the part where what you did makes him look bad. Of course he's going to be careful that nobody finds out about this. He'd never risk the Military Police coming in and telling him what to do."

"You were sure of that?" Erna marvels at Levi's foresight.

"Pretty fucking sure," he says. "I can usually guess what he's going to do, but who knows? He's insane. He has to be. It'll be interesting to see what he comes up with for punishment since he can't do anything obvious like lock you in the dungeon."

Erna swallows. She looks at the floor as she keeps pace with Levi.

Levi muses to himself, "Which is good, because I was saving that for a special occasion."

"He was really mad," Erna worries her lower lip as she processes everything.

"Can't blame him," Levi says tersely.

"Are you mad?"

She counts how many footsteps he takes in silence. Five before he says, "Come on," and walks a little faster.

She wants to ask what they do now. Erwin said to act like nothing happened, but she doesn't know if she can do that. She's afraid things can't go back to normal as much as she wants them to. She doesn't know where to go from here, but she'll take anything. Whatever Levi asks of her, she'll do gladly. So she keeps up with him even though she's scared of the outcome.

When it seems obvious that they're going back to the apartment, she thinks that he is inevitably going to tell her to pack up her shit and leave because he's done with her. That's the worst thing she can think of, but she decides that she won't argue because she deserves it. As they get closer, she mentally prepares herself for getting her clothes and things together and moving back to her old room where she'll cry until she falls asleep.

It's only when Levi says, "What are you thinking so hard about?" that she realizes they've stopped at the door to the apartment.

She looks up at him, startled out of her thoughts. After a second of bewilderment she says, "What happens now?"

Levi's hand leaves the doorknob. He can't help being taken aback when she sounds so lost and innocent. He brings his hand up and rakes his fingers through his hair as he sighs. The thing is, he doesn't exactly know what happens. It's not like he has a plan of where to go from here.

And while she's thinking that he's about to break up with her, he's dreading what he's felt coming for a while now. It's what he dreads every time she gets withdrawn and distant - the feeling that she's pulling away, that she's finding out she doesn't need him. So it's with some hesitation that he reaches and opens the door.

He feels exhausted, more than he ever has from any amount of physical exertion. He doesn't bother with taking off his boots or jacket, he only drags himself to the couch.

Erna closes the door softly. She doesn't follow him. His heart sinks as she stands there worrying her lip with her teeth. He can tell when she's dealing with something hard and he thinks this time she's thinking about how to break things off with him gently. That's been his fear more and more every day. The more she keeps changing and the more she withdraws and disappears inside herself the more he feels like he's losing her. He's less and less sure of what's going on in her head and where she used to be readable, now she's becoming a more difficult puzzle for him to solve every minute.

It's terrifying for him. When he met her, she was easy, her motivations were simple and figuring out what made her tick was effortless. Steadily, the more he made her feel the more complex she became, and at first he loved seeing that unfold, but now she's able to hide things and keep secrets and it feels like he can't keep up with her and her abstruse thought processes.

Sometimes he looks at her and it's like she's behind a wall that he can't penetrate. Sometimes she's stubborn about keeping her thoughts and emotions to herself no matter how hard he literally tries to beat them out of her. Sometimes he doesn't know what she's feeling even when she tells him.

The feeling that somewhere along the way he started to need her a lot more than she needs him is always growing. He feels like he's just waiting for her to figure it out herself. He believed her when she said she went out on her own because she wanted that rush, but also he thinks that surely this whole risky undertaking of hers was a subconscious step towards separating from him. Sneaking around and going outside the walls, killing titans on her own, it was all a big 'fuck you, look at how much I don't need anyone.'

She says, "Do you want me to leave?"

He thinks she's looking for an out. He can only imagine that she's trying to coax him into pushing her away so that she won't feel bad about it. He can't make it that easy, even though he'd do almost anything if she wanted it.  
"Do you want to leave?"

She folds her hands behind her back and breaks eye contact to look down at the floor. "No," she says. "But…"

He knew there was a 'but' coming.

"I understand if you're hurt and angry and don't want to see me anymore."

He wonders if that's how she wants him to feel. She's manipulated him before, in smaller ways. It's not a stretch to think that she would manipulate him into breaking up with her if she wanted to. Or at least that she would try to. He knows she'd never be able to succeed. He'll be dead before he stops wanting her around.

"Did you want to get caught?" he asks.

She looks up at him, confused. "Huh?"

"Did you want me to catch you so that I would be hurt and angry enough to ask you to leave?"

She seems to think about it and the longer it takes her to give him an answer the more cold and empty his gut feels.

But finally she says, "Fuck no. How could you think that?" She finally leaves the door and hurries over to him with short, careful scurrying steps. She kneels on the couch instead of the floor, taking his hand in both of hers and looking straight at him. "I've never felt so horrible about anything. I was selfish and stupid and I hate myself for it…" She bites her lip again. He watches tears start to wet the base of her lashes and her voice starts getting shaky and tight. "…and I figure you probably hate me now too, but I still love you enough that if it makes you feel better I'll go and you'll never have to see me again. I'll do anything to make you feel better, even if it hurts…" She squeezes his hand hard. "…especially if it hurts, because I deserve it. I'm the worst. You're so good to me and I'm awful."

Levi takes his hand from her and she looks heartbroken for a second, but he reaches for her face and wipes away the tears that have started falling to her cheeks. "Don't be dumb," he says. "If you want to stay, then stay," as if it's an obvious conclusion, not something worth getting worked up about.

She looks relieved from the bottom of her heart and his worries that she was trying to push him away disappear for the time being. She sobs a little and nuzzles against his hand. "Of course I want to stay. Why wouldn't I?"

He's not sure at first if he even wants to voice his concerns, because for right now they're fine. He's assured. But tomorrow, or a week, or a month from now, he'll be worrying again about the same things and wondering what she's thinking and how much time he has left with her. That's why he goes ahead and says quietly, "Because you don't need me," as she nuzzles against his collar and sighs deeply.

The statement doesn't seem to shock her. She only nuzzles her face closer into the crook of his neck and murmurs. "That's stupid. Of course I don't need you."

"What?" His hands find her shoulders and push her back so that he can look at her face and be sure that she just said what he thought he heard, because her attitude and the words don't match.

She looks at him as if she's confused by his agitated reaction. Her brow creases and she narrows her eyes at him a little as if he's being foolish. "Of course I don't need you. Nobody needs anybody. What a stupid idea. I need air and I need water. I don't need you."

He doesn't even know how to respond.

She tilts her head at him and keeps talking. "I want you a lot. I want you more every day. I'd be very sad without you. But to say I need you suggests that I wouldn't go on surviving without you and that's not true. I'd keep living without you, I'd just be sad. Being sad isn't going to kill me."

He smirks and rolls his eyes. She's so fucking literal. "Don't argue semantics, brat."

"What's a semantic?"

"It's the study of meaning and wor – nevermind."

She looks at him with those eyes that in some instances seem to him so big and innocent and new and in others seem so battle-hardened and cold and wearied. "Do you need me?"

"Not by your definition, no." Though he isn't sure that's true, even by her definition.

She rests her head on his shoulder again and he strokes her hair. As if she doesn't trust his answer, she muses, "I'd want you to keep living if I died."

"Well don't try so fucking hard to make that a reality."

"I wasn't –," she starts to protest, but quickly she gives up. "I'm sorry."

"If anybody else put your life in danger the way you've been doing yourself for the past months, I'd fucking kill them on the spot."

"I know," she says sadly. For a minute they're both quiet, both dealing with their own emotional narratives in their own heads. Then she perks up suddenly, lifting her head and facing him to say excitedly, "You should punish me."

He raises his eyebrows at her. "Sorry?"

"I did something terrible and you should punish me for it and then maybe you'll feel better."

Levi rubs the bridge of his nose between his fingers. He can see the logic, but it's so misguided. He tries to tell her, "It doesn't work that way."

She pouts, "But –"

He's surprised at her, really, because she's smart and he would have thought she understood him better than that. What she's suggesting is borderline insulting. "Can you think of literally any time I've done anything to hurt you because I was upset with you?"

"Well… I mean…" she looks at him so puzzled.

"When I hurt you it's for fun. It's because you like it and I love that you like it so much. When I punish you for breaking some stupid rule it's because that's the dynamic we've agreed on, not because I'm angry at you. I'd never hit you in anger, I'm not a fucking monster."

"No," she says. "I know. You're right." She looks down again, feeling ashamed of herself for even suggesting it. She wrings her hands and says quietly and hesitantly, "I think… I just wanted… I think it would make me feel better."

He doesn't doubt that.

"I just feel so guilty about it. It feels horrible. I hate that I hurt you and I want you to punish me."

He's known for a long time that the alleviation of guilt is part of it for her. It's part of what makes her get such a great catharsis out of pain. He knows that on the surface it's about both of them getting off, but somewhere deep down she's also taking a beating for everything in her past that she blames herself for whether she deserves the blame or not. It's uncomfortable for him, but at the same time he accepts it because without the pain and punishment he gives her she would be torturing herself in worse ways, pushing all of her feelings down to wherever she kept them before she met him and going through life like an automaton again.

He's almost tempted. Only because he's happier when he sees that relieved, blissful look on her face after he's beaten the demons out of her. But the idea of punishing her for unintentionally hurting him, for fucking up, makes him nauseous. He can't even force himself.

"I'd help you out if I could, but not this time."

"I'm sorry," she sighs. "I shouldn't have asked."

He pulls her close. "I think what you're feeling has to be part of it. You're supposed to feel guilty when you hurt someone you care about. It feels shitty and that's what makes you think twice about doing it again."

"Feels bad," she mutters. "Don't like it."

That's good to hear.

"Sometimes I forget that you're doing all this feeling and empathy shit for the first time," he says. "You're so smart, but you don't have all the formative life experiences that most people do."

Ever curious and sharp as a fucking tack, she asks, "When was the first time you hurt someone you cared about?"

He thinks it was probably one of the many times he made Isabel cry, because she was always so fucking sensitive and he was always so not, or any of the times that he was a sarcastic dick towards Farlan, or one of the times he lost his temper with both of them. He didn't feel so much guilt about it at the time, but he does now knowing that he'll never be able to make it up to them. Time passed in this case only magnifies the emotions rather than reducing them.

"We're not going to talk about that," he deadpans, because it's too painful and he's had enough pain for today.

"If we're not going to talk and you're not going to punish me, what are we going to do?" she prods. "Because it's too early to go to sleep."

His immediate thought is that he just wants to hold her longer and be glad in the thought that he didn't lose her, but that sounds sickeningly sweet and romantic and he doesn't know where that even came from. He shakes his head at himself and wonders when he became such a fucking sap. Disgusted, he pushes her shoulder. "For a start, you can get a pen and some paper from the office and start writing down everything you've done so that you can give Hange some notes tomorrow."

Erna quits leaning on him and groans. She holds her head in her hands as she remembers that she's going to be forced to spend hours with Hange tomorrow.

"The more you write down now, the less time you'll have to spend with her," Levi warns her.

The sound advice is taken with more groaning. Erna stands up, shoulders slumped and lips pouting. "I don't even know what to write. There's nothing to say."

"Every. Fucking. Detail." Levi gets up and moves to the door. "What the weather was like, what phase the moon was in, everything that you don't even think to note is important to Hange."

"That's crazy," she whines.

Despite… how Hange is… Levi won't stand for anyone knocking her research… Except him… He gets to call it crazy. No one else.  
"It's not crazy when we don't know shit about them," he responds. His severe tone wiping the pout off her face. "You don't know what might be important. There might be commonalities that we're missing because nobody has the brains to pay attention. So you'd better scour your fucking memory and come up with something of note if you want all of this to be worth making me feel like shit and jeopardizing your position here."

All of the brattiness disappears as she looks down and repeats, "I'm sorry."

The ghost of a smile quirks the corner of his lips. He hadn't meant to be harsh, but at the same time it felt good. It felt right. He realizes it might take some time to re-learn when to be harsh because she needs it and when to give her leeway to make mistakes. He can't resist pushing further to tease her. "Not to mention you could have fucking died, brat. So get to work."

Before turning on her heels toward the office, she asks, "Where are you going?" with more than a hint of insecurity and vulnerability that he's honestly glad to hear.

"Getting tea and dinner. I'll be back."

Even though he said he wouldn't punish her, and she knows this isn't intended as a punishment, Erna goes to the office pretending that this is a punishment of sorts. She grabs a stack of paper and a pen from the desk and returns to the living room, sitting down to remember and write even though it makes her miserable. There's a charge she gets out of it the more hard and distressing it is as she tells herself that she deserves this – that she deserves to be in anguish. So she works hard to remember the first time she went out past the wall by herself even though she'd rather forget everything she did to lead up to this moment.

While the need for tea and food was real, Levi really left more because he felt like they both needed some minutes to themselves to process. At least he does.

He ends up at Erwin's office, knowing the old idiot will be working well into the night as usual. The door is open a crack, so Levi barges in. Erwin is still at his desk, looking down at some papers, holding his forehead in his hands as if he's frustrated or having a hard time figuring something out. At the sound of Levi coming in and closing the door he lifts his eyes.

The first thing he asks is, "Are you here in a professional capacity or a social one?"

"Both," Levi says as he flops into a chair and throws his legs over the arm of it.

"It can't be both," Erwin reminds him. He is staunchly conscientious about separating those two things, the tight ass.

Levi wonders exactly what he came here for. He wasn't thinking while his feet were carrying him to Erwin's office, it just happened. "Social, then."

So Erwin asks, "Are you okay?"

"It would be pretty fucked up if I were okay, wouldn't it?"

Erwin's face twists into an uncomfortable grimace. He didn't mean it that literally and he can't tell if Levi is being irritable or obtuse, his expression being inscrutable as always. He doesn't know what words would placate him in this instance. In fact he feels like no matter what he says he will only get antagonistic sarcasm as a response, so he decides to keep quiet and let Levi speak first.

Levi doesn't say anything for some time. He leans into the chair and looks upward to the ceiling as if thinking and choosing his words carefully. At least it looks that way. But the words he eventually carefully chooses are, "What the fuck, Erwin."

Eloquent as ever. Though from the weary, weighed down, almost astonished tone to his voice, Erwin can pick up most of his meaning. Those four words are meant to convey disbelief that someone could think to do something so reckless and somehow actually survive. They convey that Levi feels his world falling out of its carefully constructed order and it has him shaken. They convey that right now he needs a break from being the strict Captain of the Survey Corps and needs some reassurance.

Erwin can relate to an extent. He is not similarly shaken, but he is still suffering some shock. When soldiers go rogue and disobey orders, it's in the heat of battle when adrenaline is high and their fight or flight instincts kick in despite all their training. It isn't planned meticulously and carried on over the course of months with care to never let anyone catch on.

At first it was impossible for him to believe. But he saw her eyes. There wasn't any guile there. Only so much regret and guilt that there was no doubting the truth.

Erwin unlocks a desk drawer and removes a small bottle of brandy and two glasses as he says, "What the fuck indeed."

Levi snorts and the corners of his lips turn up slightly in a smile. It's a rare treat for him when Erwin uses profanity and it is unfailingly entertaining.

As he pours the thick, slightly sweet smelling liquid into the two small glasses, Erwin asks, "How did you catch her?"

Levi swings his legs back over the arm of the chair, placing his feet on the ground and reaching toward the desk to take the glass almost before Erwin finishes filling it. He downs it in one gulp as if it's water and after rescinding the empty glass he says, "This morning she asked me if I was busy."

Slowly, Erwin recaps the bottle, smirking and trying to keep a straight face he says, "Yes, well, I can see how obvious it all was then."

"I don't fucking know," Levi sighs, a little frustrated as if he's perplexed by it himself. "It was the look on her face and a shitty feeling I had."

Erwin is glad for his intuition. He doesn't want to imagine how difficult things could have gotten if after one of her excursions Erna didn't come back. No one's ever just gone up and missing out of nowhere. It would have been horrible for morale and would have drawn the attention of the Military Police who were always waiting to jump on cases of desertion when it came to the Survey Corps. There weren't any cases of it in all the time Erwin has been Commander, but they expected it, spread rumors of it, and would jump on any chance to prove that the stress put on the members of the Survey Corps were too much for any sane person to handle.

Erwin sips his brandy and thinks that maybe they're right. Sanity is something in short supply among his soldiers.

"Did she say why?" he asks.

Levi reaches again and snatches the bottle of brandy, uncapping it and filling his glass to the brim. Somehow he leans back into the chair and kicks his legs over the arm rest without spilling a drop. "The adrenaline rush."

"That's not unbelievable," Erwin says. "Some people find it addictive. But going that far to get a fix…" he trails off.

Levi contemplates the liquid in his glass for a moment. "Erwin," he says and then pauses while he, again, swallows the brandy in one go. "Do you think she wanted to get caught?"

That is a very interesting question. One he has already given some thought to. "I think…" Erwin hesitates. If it were any other soldier this would be an easier conversation. There wouldn't be so much emotion behind Levi's inquiry. There wouldn't be so much complication wrapped up in it all. Erwin can only try to be gentle. "Yes. I think she did."

Levi winces and Erwin hurries to qualify his statement. "I think she was acting out in a way, maybe unconsciously. I blame myself to some extent." Levi stops swinging his legs restlessly over the armchair and quirks an eyebrow at him curiously. Erwin looks down at the deep brown liquid in his glass, feeling, for the first time in a long time, that he made an error in judgment as Commander. "I took her off all active duty and pressed her to accept a promotion to squad leader. I think in part she's being truthful about seeking the adrenaline, but I also think it was an act of rebellion and I think it was her trying to prove that she isn't responsible enough to lead others."

Levi makes a gruff humming noise. Erwin can see his eyes move slightly as he considers those words. Finally he says, "That's a relief."

Erwin nearly sputters out the brandy he is sipping. Once he's together he is able to ask, "How?"

Levi's face keeps its bored expression, not reacting to Erwin's confusion. He simply muses, "I thought she was trying to push me away."

There is a beat of silence. Then Erwin's shoulders start to shake. He begins to laugh. He can't help it. The more that Levi stares daggers at him and the more he tries to stop the deeper his laughter becomes until he can hardly breathe. Levi is scowling at him like he never has before and Erwin gasps out, "Is that.. ha um.. is that what this was about?"

"Fuck you."

Erwin's mouth feels like it will crack from smiling wider than it's used to. He chuckles and is about to have a fit of laughter again until he breathes deeply and closes his eyes. He inhales again and his breath only shakes slightly with laughter as he exhales. "I'm sorry," he says, but the apology doesn't seem very genuine since he can't stop smiling. "Humanity's Strongest fretting over a woman's affection – I'm sorry," he claps a hand over his mouth and bangs his fist against the desk. It's too much.

"I should have slit your fucking throat when I had the chance, you greasy, giant, walking pair of eyebrows."

"Okay, I'm done," Erwin unclasps his mouth and apologizes. He breathes deeply again and tries not to look at Levi's face, because the more indignant he looks the more likely it is to send him into another fit of laughter. "Levi, that girl couldn't be separated from you with a titansteel crowbar. That's half of why it's so ridiculous." Levi grunts at him and Erwin can't resist saying, "The other half is that the most intimidating man I know is struggling with romantic insecurity. It's just so out of character."

Erwin grins from ear to ear as the short Captain calls him a shithead and a lot of other things in French. He doesn't even mind that Levi snatches the brandy off of the desk and swipes a stack of papers, sending them fluttering to the ground as he stalks out.

Erwin smiles smugly at the slamming door. He leans back in his chair, kicks his feet up onto the desk and holds up his glass of brandy, admiring the way the light hits the dark liquid.

"Worth it," he says to himself.

Levi doesn't drink the entire bottle in half a minute like he usually would. He took it from Erwin more because he didn't want the smug fucker to have it, and less because he felt like getting drunk. Now, as he walks down the stone halls, he doesn't know what to do with it. It sounds stupid to him to hang onto it. He's unfamiliar with the concept of saving booze for later consumption. So when he sees Kirschtein and Arlert down the hall, both with arms full of books and things, he stops them, much to their terror.

"What the fuck is going on, brats?"

Arlert stammers and looks like he might shit himself, which lightens Levi's mood some. Kirschtein somehow still has the ability to speak, though he sounds like a goddamn idiot when he opens his mouth, "Levi... I mean, Captain... Sir... um, I got assigned a new room… because of the promotion, you know…"

Levi's expression remains even and unimpressed. "Who had to die for you to get their room?"

That sets Kirschtein off stammering. Arlert's mouth just hangs open, stunned and speechless. Now Levi feels pretty goddamn satisfied with himself. He glances at the door next to them. "You're moving here?"

"Y-yes, Sir…" Arlert stutters.

An exasperated sigh leaves Levi's lips. "Fuck."

"Sir?"

"My apartment is across the hall." He points to his door with a grimace.

"Um… I'm.. Sorry?" Arlert offers awkwardly, not knowing what he should say in this situation.

"Here," Levi shoves the bottle of brandy into Kirschtein's arms, making him drop about half of the shit he was holding. "Housewarming gift." He turns away before the brats can get their wits together to thank him. "Keep the goddamn noise down."

He slams the door open abruptly, startling Erna who had been kneeling on the floor and resting her head on the coffee table, on a stack of paper, possibly sleeping. She looks at him like a guilty puppy.

"It's not you," he explains. "I'm not pissed at you."

"What is it?" she asks carefully.

First he says, "Nothing." Then he amends that. "Erwin's a shithead and we have new neighbors."

"Oh. Armin and Jean?"

"You knew?" He crosses the room to sit in one of the armchairs.

"Of course," she says. "Jean couldn't not brag about it. Does it matter?"

"I like to keep the brats at a distance," he answers. 'The brats' being that entire 104th squad. "But no, it doesn't really matter. Just don't invite them over for slumber parties and shit. I like my privacy."

Erna picks up the papers she'd been resting her head on and Levi watches her eyes scan back and forth as she re-reads what she has so far. Absently she says, "I'm too old for slumber parties."

He smirks at the hint of indignation in her voice. Stealthily, careful not to disturb her, he moves to the couch and settles in behind her, trapping her on the floor between his legs. He leans over her, circling his arms around her shoulders and resting his chin on her hair. She pretends to keep reading, holding her papers in front of her, but he can feel her relax.

He asks, just to make sure, "You know I love you, right?"

She hums a little uncertainly and makes a pained noise. After a moment of silence she asks, "Can you ever trust me again?"

He thinks about it. He isn't sure he trusts her right now. It doesn't make sense to trust her after what she did. In a way he's afraid of her and what she might do and how much he feels for her. He doesn't trust that she won't hurt him, but despite all common sense it doesn't make him love her less.

"Not right now," he says. "You have to earn trust."

She nods her head slight and determined. "I will."

Levi believes her and trusts her intentions, but in some way still regards her as an unpredictable wild animal that he'll never fully understand. He's eager to continue to try anyway.

"Let's go to bed." He stands up and nudges her with his foot.

The suggestion makes her yawn, but she declines. "I don't deserve the bed. I'll sleep on the couch."

Levi stares almost in shock as she unfolds her legs and goes to slink onto the stiff couch behind her. Before she can stretch onto it he's grabbing her by her wrist and yanking her up. She makes a small surprised noise until he growls at her, "You're sleeping in the bed."

Her shoulders slump and she pouts, whining at him, "I don't want to. I don't want you to be nice to me. I did an awful thing and I don't deserve it."

"Too bad." He pulls her to him, turns her toward the bedroom and pushes, giving her an extra shove anytime her footsteps drag and she seems like she might try to turn around, all the while lecturing her. "How do you think you would you feel if you had to watch me torture myself?"

She pauses at the bed, staring down at the sheets, shoulders slumped in defeat. "I'd feel really sad."

Levi points to her side of the bed. "So get in bed and stop being a brat."

He leaves her standing there. To give her a minute to think, he goes to the bathroom and takes his time showering and brushing his teeth. When he comes back she's under the covers. He doesn't say anything about how glad he is that she came to her senses. Unceremoniously he strips off his uniform and pulls back the covers to lie down next to her. He stares up at the ceiling and wonders if he should hold her in a tight death grip like he usually does or give her space. Before he comes to a decision, she turns over and curls against him, resting her head on his shoulder and making it easy for him to put an arm around her.

His fingers pull at and play with her dark hair and he notices the softness of her skin against him with new wonder like he'd been taking all of her for granted. Whether she's already asleep or not, he doesn't care – he says, "I'll start being mean to you again when you're not so dead set on being mean to yourself."


	28. An Introduction to Power Dynamics

 

“It feels worse when you’re nice to me,” Erna mumbles sleepily.

She woke up in Levi’s arms, her back to him. She slept like the dead, being as emotionally exhausted as she was. He woke her up by kissing the back of her neck. When she mumbles at him he stops.

“Do you mean in general? Or because you feel bad?” he asks.

He loosens his hold on her a little as she wriggles around to face him.

“Can’t it be both?”

He looks in her big grey eyes, her long, dark eyelashes still matted together with dried tears from last night and his heart feels tight in his chest again. He leans forward and kisses her, softly, even though she hates that. He just needs to.

When he lets her have her lips back, he tells her, “I don’t want you to feel bad.”

She blinks a few times, a little confused. “Aren’t you upset with me?”

“I’m just happy you’re okay,” he says quietly, not wanting to disturb this pre-dawn peacefulness.

She pouts. “You should be mad at me. I’m horrible.”

“If I did something that hurt you, would you want me to feel the way you’re making yourself feel right now?”

“You would never hurt me like that. You’re perfect and I’m awful.” Her face gets more pinched and her voice is shrill. On that last word her lips go back into a pout and she starts blinking fast like she’s going to cry again.

Levi lightly pinches her chin between his thumb and forefinger and tilts her face up to look at him as he says calmly, “Oi. Answer the question.”

She sulks, but answers truthfully, “No.”

“Because?”

She sniffles as she wraps her arms around his neck and violently pulls herself closer to him. She buries her face into the crook of his shoulder so it gets muffled when she says, “Because I love you.”

Levi rubs his cheek against her hair in a rare moment of tenderness and assures her, “And I love you too…” When he feels her breathing even out and it seems less likely that she’ll break into tears, he says, “So stop being dumb,” and slides his hand down from her waist to give her a quick smack on the ass.

She only squirms and nuzzles against him harder so that he has to shove her away a little. It feels like she’s going to squeeze the breath out of his lungs. He’d love to stay in bed all day and let her, but they both have busy days ahead of them.   
“Go take a shower. I have to take you to Hange.”

She gets up and goes to the bathroom without as much groaning and whining as usual, but she does take a long-ass time about getting ready, trying to delay. He decides not to give her shit about it. He wouldn’t want to have to spend more than ten minutes locked in a room with Hange either.

He escorts her to Hange’s office silently. The only thing he says right before he knocks on the door and surrenders her to Hange is, “Do you want me to stay?”

She bites her lip uncertainly, but shakes her head.

Erna knows she would be better off if he did stay for moral support. Maybe that’s why she doesn’t want him to. On some level she wants this to be as difficult as possible. It’s the punishment she was looking for.

So she lets Hange grab her hand and pull her inside her office/lab/sometimes living quarters rather eagerly. She submits the best she can to her questioning… for hours…

It’s difficult for both of them. Erna struggles to remember things that happened when she was in a state that isn’t exactly like normal consciousness, where saving and storing detailed and cohesive memories is rare. Anything that happened when she was in an adrenaline fueled state is at best recalled in dream-like snatches that aren’t overly reliable. And Hange gets frustrated easily when Erna’s unreliable memory prevents her from her due diligence in taking notes and statistics.

It’s when they’re trying to pin down exactly when and where she saw an abnormal titan that it starts to come to a head. Erna’s inability to remember the dates of her excursions frustrates Hange to no end, but she pushes ahead and continues to ask more and more detailed questions. Erna tries to cooperate, but she is also frustrated at the seemingly meaningless queries.

“When you killed it, how exactly did you do it?”

Erna wants to snap back sarcastically that she cut the nape of its neck, but she checks her temper. She thinks hard.   
“I had to disable it first… That was the whole point at first. It was safer to get them to the ground than to maneuver all the way up to their necks…”

“ _How_ did you disable it?” Hange asks, her voice becoming obviously strained.

“Um… I would have had to cut one of it’s crucial tendons…”

“Do you remember which one?”

“If I remembered which one, I would tell you!” Erna shouts.

Hange grits her teeth. “Okay…” She takes a deep breath. “Let’s move on.” She writes a short note and then asks, “How did it react when you disabled it?”

Erna’s brow wrinkles and she tilts her head at the squad leader. “What does that mean?”

Hange leans on the desk with one hand and pinches the bridge of her nose, pushing her glasses up. “Did it have any reaction to being disabled?”

“Um… it fell…”

“Did it seem to notice what was happening? Was it aware? Did it feel pain?”

Erna throws her hands up. “I don’t know! How could I have noticed that!? I was less concerned with its pain and more concerned with not fucking dying!”

Hange’s palm comes slightly off the desk and slams back down with a loud thud that, combined with the look in her eyes makes Erna immediately stop shouting and jump out of her chair slightly.

Hange leans over the desk and speaks in a low and dangerous voice. “Your job is to be observant. Otherwise you’re just putting a small bandage over a gaping wound with every titan you kill.” She slams her fist down on the desk again for emphasis. “The point…” she says, “Is to learn about them. Not just kill them.”

“Sorry,” Erna says almost too quietly to be heard. She swallows down a lump in her throat and says again more loudly, “I’m sorry. You’re right.”

Hange’s expression doesn’t soften. She says, “I know I’m right. Now calm down and think harder. Try to remember.”

Erna tries in her own way to do that. She remembers feelings. She remembers how it feels to be staring into one of their faces, with your heart racing, aware that if you make the wrong move at the wrong moment your life will be over. She tries to put herself back in that place.

“I probably cut its Achilles tendon and then the quadriceps tendon and hamstring. That’s what I usually did. I wouldn’t have seen its face or any expression it was making while I did that.”

“Fair enough,” Hange concedes. “How big was it?”

There’s another long stretch of silence as Erna thinks. She wants to give her very best estimate, so she tries hard to remember.

“Eight or Nine meters?”

“You don’t sound sure,” Hange says disapprovingly.

“I-I’m not…” Erna bites the inside of her cheek and feels the corners of her eyes getting hot and itchy. Her fingers find the palm of her opposite hand and unconsciously her nails dig in.

Hange frowns and looks defeated. She brings a hand to her forehead and holds it there before looking at the ground and rubbing her temples with a long sigh. Bitterly, she says more to herself, “You can handle battlefield stress just fine, but this is too much…”

Erna’s lip quivers. “That’s why I did it in the first place…”

“I’m sorry that this is hard, but I need to keep pushing you.”

“I know,” Erna says through tears.

Hange sits down behind her desk and looks down at the notes she’s taken so far.   
“Take the rest of the day to think and come back tomorrow morning.”

Erna’s shoulders slump and she picks herself up from her chair and moves to the door like a sleepwalker. She closes it behind her.

A familiar, meek voice says, “Oh, hey…” from the other side of the hallway.

It makes her wince. She wipes the sleeve of her jacket over her eyes quickly to hide her tears from Armin. She starts walking away because she can’t bring herself to say anything to him. She wants to be left alone.

He trails after her. Before he can think of something to say, she snaps, “What?”

“Um… W-well… I-I’m supposed…”

“Out with it.” She stops and spins on her heel suddenly to face him.

“Are you okay?” he asks, seeing her face with its bloodshot eyes and strained expression.

She covers her forehead with a hand and rubs her temples, hiding her face for the most part. “I’m fine… just… what do you want?”

“I’m supposed to make sure you go to your meeting with Mike.”

Erna tilts her head back and groans. She almost forgot. Good. He can be all smug and look down his giant nose at her for getting caught. As Armin walks alongside her towards Mike’s office, she says, “I assume they didn’t tell you why.”

“No,” Armin answers. “Mike just said that you have a habit of skipping out on meetings with him.”

She snorts at that, then changes the subject. “How’s your new place?”

“Well, it’s a lot bigger. That’s taking some getting used to.”

“Any luck getting your kinkiness across to Jean?” She knows that she shouldn’t ask, because she knows the answer and that it is still a sore spot for her friend, but she isn’t feeling very friendly right now. She’s lashing out again, mostly because she’s angry at herself and if no one is going to punish her to mitigate that anger, then she’s going to punish others for liking her well enough to be her friend.

“I haven’t.. um.. really.. tried…”

“Well, as long as you’re satisfied enough, I guess,” she says with easy malice, the cruelty giving her a dark pleasure.

She would feel bad. Usually her hidden objective with saying hurtful things to people who care about her is to make herself feel bad. But Armin doesn’t react in a way that makes her feel like a monster. It’s like he likes it when she’s mean to him. In a way it isn’t as satisfying for her. It doesn’t give her a rush of guilt that makes her want to cry and hurt herself.

“I just can’t think of how…”

The cruelest thing she can think to say is, “Maybe you should dump him and be with someone you wouldn’t need to explain it to. There are people who just get it and some people don’t and never will.”

Armin stops walking. Erna turns around and looks back at him.

“That’s not fair,” he says sadly and quietly.

There’s the feeling she wanted, she thinks as her heart sinks to familiar depths and she feels like a horrible person. “I’m sorry.” She pauses to feel how sorry she is. She takes his hand and says, “I’m having a really bad time and I took it out on you. I’m not a good friend.”

Armin is a little taken aback by the physical contact, something Erna normally hates enough to avoid completely. He stares with slightly widened eyes at her small, delicate hand holding his until he stammers, “I-it’s… it’s okay…”

She thinks about pulling him into a hug, not because she would ever want a hug, but because his confused reaction to the hand holding was cute. She likes confusing him and keeping him on his toes. She decides against it for now, but more because she wants to save it for later. So she lets go of his hand and says, “You should leave me alone for now. I promise I’ll go see Mike. I won’t get you in trouble by flaking.”

“I hope you feel better,” he says genuinely and cheerfully as if his hopeful outlook could help her.

She shrugs. She can’t say that she will or even that she hopes the same.

 

Talking to Mike is easier than talking to Hange. Probably because he’s been waiting for this. He always knew she would get caught.

That fact makes him seem smug and Erna would be angry about it if she weren’t angrier at herself.

He lets her play chess with him as they talk, a tried and true technique of keeping her from getting too emotional or blacking out.

His conclusion is that she did it because she knew what an awful thing it was. She knew that she would eventually be caught, that it would hurt Levi, that it would get her in trouble with Erwin, and that she would feel as terrible as she feels now. He thinks that she did it to prove that she’s the monster she’s always believed herself to be in her head. She wanted to believe that she’s horrible and that she only hurts people, but she needed to give herself evidence. Her solo excursions beyond the wall were her evidence. The PTSD and adrenaline addiction were only convenient scapegoats.

She knows that she thinks she’s a monster. She’s not sure if she thinks he’s right about her motivations. But she accepts that Mike is very much smarter than her, so she’s willing to entertain the possibilities without fighting him too much anymore. And when she doesn’t fight him on those points it finally gives them time to talk more. He gets to ask her how she’s feeling now.

“Shitty,” she answers simply as she snatches a white knight off the board.

“You like feeling that way, though,” he says matter of factly.

She doesn’t argue. “I thought I would be… I don’t know… I thought I would be in more trouble than this. I thought I would be punished. Like there would be consequences. Instead I’m still just in this purgatory.”

“Have you been trying to punish yourself?”

“Levi says I have been. He doesn’t want me to… doesn’t want me to feel bad. But I did a horrible thing. I should feel bad.”

Mike doesn’t say anything to that. He only looks down at the board and hums. It annoys Erna. She wants to know if he’s silent because he’s thinking or if he’s silent because he has something he’s not saying to her. It feels patronizing when he doesn’t talk.

“If someone were to make you feel bad for it, would you then feel better?” He finally says. Then he takes her rook.

Her shoulders slump at the unanticipated move. She sulks and rests her chin in her hand.

“Yeah. I think I would. I kind of told Levi that, but he basically thinks that’s unhealthy. Or he’s just not comfortable with it. I don’t know.”

A long silence passes as she looks all around the checkered pattern on the board, trying to find moves that will unfuck her position. She hates losing. Eventually she gets frustrated and makes a move just for the sake of doing it, not because she’s found an out.

As she waits for him to take his turn, she asks, “Do you think it’s unhealthy?”

He hums gruffly. “That’s very hard to say…” Then, “… Checkmate.”

.,.,.,.,.,.,,.,.,..,,.,.,.,.,.,,.,..,.,.,.,.,

 

After going to the kitchen to grab some bread for lunch, Erna stops at Erwin’s office. She takes a deep breath and raps at the big wooden door.

“Enter.”

As she does, the doubt that Mike placed in her head asks her if this is another thing she’s doing to punish herself, because the last person she really wants to see right now is Erwin. She closes the door behind her. He’s sitting at his desk, looking colder than usual. He folds his hands as she comes in.

“Sorry if this is a bad time,” she says as she looks down at the floor submissively. “It’s just… I’m trying to remember things for Hange… She wants dates… I don’t know where to look for any records of events that would help me give her a more exact timeline.”

There’s a short silence, then Erwin says, “Such as…?”

“U-umm…” she stammers nervously. “When new recruits came and I was reassigned to Mike’s squad?”

There’s a tense silence. Erna risks a glance up to look Erwin in the eyes. He’s staring at her like a wolf.

Then, with a deep, gruff breath he opens a desk drawer, breaking his gaze from her and leafs through the files there. As he does, she says again, quietly and penitently, “Sorry.”

When he takes out a small leather binder and holds it out to her, she takes a deep unconscious breath of relief that she won’t have to stand there any longer. As she steps forward and takes it as carefully as possibly, he says, “That should have everything you need.”

“Thanks, um…” She’s at a loss. So she backs away and says, “Thanks,” again, meekly and hurries out the door.

She takes deep breaths to calm herself all the way back to the apartment where she gets paper and pens again to take notes as she tries to remember. She prays that the leatherbound book that Erwin gave her has the dates that she needs so that she’ll never have to go ask him for anything ever again. The next time she sees him she hopes it will only be because he’s thought of a fitting punishment for her that will help her bring closure to this whole awful thing.

The leatherbound book is something like a Survey Corps journal with summaries of notable events scrawled underneath important dates. It helps her find the anchor for her memory. The day she was transferred to Mike’s squad was when she came up with the whole stupid idea of going outside the walls. A few days after that is when she actually started doing it. She starts writing down estimated date ranges of when she would have seen titans. After she finishes that, she goes to the library and starts looking for maps. She wants to be able to give Hanji a good idea of where she was going. It’s easy to find one of the area surrounding headquarters, but it’s frustrating as hell for her to try to read it after she takes it back to the apartment. She doesn’t understand how to tell where north, south, east and west are and without a more detailed sketch of headquarters or even the forest near the wall, it’s impossible for her to tell where she was heading when she went off on her own. She folds the map back up after a while and sets it on top of her notes to take to Hanji tomorrow. She’ll help her figure it out.

When Levi walks in, she nearly jumps on him as a welcome distraction.

She hops up from the couch, almost standing on her tiptoes with eager energy as she asks, “How was your day?”

“Not as bad as yours, I’m sure.”

“Can I do anything for you? Do you want tea? Food? Or I can polish your boots.” She takes his jacket from him as he takes it off.

He raises an eyebrow, regarding her carefully before snatching his jacket back from her and telling her, “You’re being weird.”

She lets out a long sigh. “I just want to make you happy.”

“You do,” he deadpans, “by being yourself. So don’t try so hard.”

Her shoulders slump as he hangs his jacket up and starts to take his boots off.

He looks at her again and frowns at her defeated look. He would give anything for her to go back to her bright, manic self.

“Look,” he says, “Go do something that you enjoy. That would make me happy.”

She wants to say that she doesn’t have anything like that, but she knows that isn’t the right answer. She tries to think of anything she likes that isn’t him.

When he sees her trying hard to think, Levi tries to help her out. “Don’t you love that rabid horse of yours? Go for a ride before it gets too dark.”

Erna frowns, feeling guilty about doing anything for just herself. “You’re sure I can’t do anything for you?”

“Do I look like an invalid to you?” he says darkly.

That’s her cue to stop pressing the subject.  She pulls her boots on and leaves him alone.

.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,,.

 

When Jean comes home after finishing training with his team, he finds his boyfriend sitting up in their new queen size bed reading. He flashes him a smile, gives him a quick kiss, and tells him that he’s going to take a shower.

Armin takes a deep breath and sighs, because he knows what’s coming after. They were both too tired to fool around the night before and he knows Jean is still riding high on a sense of achievement and a well-deserved confidence after being assigned the new, and much more spacious, living quarters.

Armin can’t complain about the new rooms. He hasn’t ever really had anything like an apartment of his own. It’s a new kind of freedom of privacy that he isn’t used to, but so far he loves it.

So when Jean predictably comes out of the master bathroom wet, clean, naked, with a self satisfied smirk and a hard cock, Armin feels obligated toward him. Because of course, he’s the whole reason for the new living situation Armin’s been enjoying so much for the past twenty-four hours.

So even though he finds it tedious and predictable and boring, he lets Jean lean over him and kiss his lips softly. He makes the appreciative mewling and moaning sounds that turn his boyfriend on so much as Jean gently pulls down his white pants and briefs. He makes sure to buck his hips at appropriate moments to make it look like he’s thoroughly enjoying it. He doesn’t speak up and say that he hates receiving oral as Jean plants his hands on either side of his hips and takes his own hard cock in his hand, stroking it slowly while he takes Armin’s flaccid member in his mouth and sucks lightly.

Armin closes his eyes and tries hard to imagine a different scenario where Jean isn’t so nice to him or so gentle. It’s not easy. At least when he’s bottoming it’s easier to imagine that the slight pain associated with it is being caused on purpose. When Jean wants to give him head it’s hard to imagine that anything remotely sadistic is going on.

He wishes that he could be turned on when Jean’s tongue licks over the tip of his head, swirling around before he bobs his mouth up and down as much as he’s able while Armin is still soft, sucking hard so that it won’t escape his lips. He used to be able to enjoy this. When they first admitted their feelings to each other, and for some time after, it was enough just to have physical contact with the friend he’d been attracted to for so long. He could get excited just from looking at Jean’s tanned, toned body or even just from his crooked smirk and that look in his eyes. Steadily, as time goes on, none of that is enough. Nothing will ever be enough if Armin needs to keep denying the submissive side of his sexuality. And getting his cock sucked by his loving boyfriend doesn’t feel very submissive.

Jean tries for what seems like an eternity, sucking his cheeks in harder, using his hands, looking up into Armin’s eyes as he makes a show of opening his mouth and licking him from base to tip… Until even he notices that something is off. Finally he stops and places his hands on Armin’s thighs, caressing them soothingly, asking, “Hey, are you okay?”

Armin bites his tongue and then his lip. He nods and murmurs, “mm-hmm.”

“Am I doing something wrong? Or-”

The depth of his concern and consideration makes Armin feel terrible. He knows he’ll never be able to get it up now and he feels horribly fucked up for not being able to be turned on by someone who loves him so much. He blurts out a little too loudly and defensively, “You’re not doing anything wrong.”

Jean looks at him with eyes widened a little by worry and asks if he wants to stop.

Tears finally start to well up after keeping everything he’s been feeling inside for so long. Armin nods yes that he does want to stop and at the same time he chokes on a sob. Jean moves up to sit next to him on the bed and he encircles Armin in his arms and holds him tight. His voice is full of love and anxiety as he smoothes his hand through Armin’s golden hair and asks him repeatedly what’s wrong as the blond tries to catch his breath.

 

“I just… I um, I don’t… Oh,” he says, wishing he could take it back and say that everything’s fine, but there’s no way Jean would believe that now. “I don’t, um, like it when… when you give me oral…”

“Armin, that’s okay!” Jean says quickly, the anxiety ebbing away a little. “I don’t have to.” His forehead crinkles in confusion. “Is that it? If you hate it, I’ll never do it again. I thought you liked it, I’m sorry. Just tell me next time I’m doing something you don’t like. I’m not so selfish that you can’t tell me.”

“Oh, I wish you were more selfish,” Armin blurts out impulsively, and immediately his hand covers his mouth. He didn’t mean to say that.

“I don’t understand.”

Armin can feel his skin getting unbearably hot and turning red. He closes his eyes and wishes he could disappear.

“Armin, I don’t get it. What do you mean?” Jean implores him.

“I can’t,” he whines. “It’s too embarrassing.”

“Please,” Jean begs, sounding as if he’s on the verge of tears himself. “Please tell me. You don’t need to be embarrassed about anything with me.”

Armin knows he needs to take this chance or he’ll probably never tell Jean how he feels. He wants to, but wanting to still doesn’t make it easier. He sobs some more, feeling worse and worse the more he makes Jean worry. In between sobs he finally tells him, “You’re… going… to… think… it’s… horrible…”

Jean holds his hand tight and kisses each of his knuckles, saying softly, “Nothing about you could ever be horrible.”

That gives Armin a little resolve. He grips his boyfriend’s hand tight and tries to assure himself that Jean will love him no matter what. Even so, he can’t bring himself to look him in the eye as he tries to explain. So he presses his face against Jean’s chest and tries to speak clearly enough that it won’t be necessary to repeat himself because he doesn’t think he could bear it.   
“I just… I don’t… want you to be so nice to me.”

“What do you mean? I love you… how could I not be nice? Are you trying to say you don’t want to be with me?”

“No no no! It’s not that! I love you too. I always want to be with you.” Armin is shocked out of his tears and realizes he needs to make this much clearer without dying of shame. “It’s only, um, when we’re having sex, I would um, like it if you were… rougher?”

When Jean stiffens and doesn’t say anything, Armin tries to back pedal. “I mean only if you want to, not if you’re uncomfortable with it!”

“I… I don’t want to hurt you…” Jean sounds bewildered by the very proposition of it.

Armin’s heart sinks. He knew it would be like this. “You don’t have to. It’s okay. Forget I said anything.”

But of course Jean can’t. He asks, “Do you mean… How long have you felt like this?”

“Well, not at first – No! I mean… I’ve always been like this… I just was sort of ignoring it.”

“Oh my god.” Jean grimaces. He lets go of Armin’s hand and holds his own forehead, then slowly wipes away tears that had just started to form out of worry over Armin’s little breakdown. Then he covers his mouth and teaks a deep breath. After a moment he lets his hand fall and asks, “Like what? What do you mean you’ve always been like this?”

“Like…” Armin struggles with the words he wants to use, because he knows so many words for what he is, but he wants one that won’t sound horrid to Jean. “I’m kind of… submissive?”

Jean isn’t so taken aback at that word. Not like he would be if Armin had said that he’s a masochist or wants to be taken advantage of and humiliated. He knows Armin has never been one to take initiative when it comes to sex, always being more shy than aggressive. It’s one of the many things Jean finds endearing about him. So he calms down a little… enough to entertain the idea and ask, “What would you want me to do?”

Armin is suddenly hopeful, but not unreasonably optimistic. He isn’t even going to mention anything extreme after having seen how Jean looks down on Erna and Levi’s BDSM dynamic with disdain. “We can start small,” he says timidly. “I don’t want you to do anything that makes you uncomfortable… but we could try things…”

“I don’t want to do anything that would make you uncomfortable either.” Jean smiles. “So you have to tell me: what do you mean exactly.”

“Would you be okay with… I don’t know…” Armin says as if he’s never thought about it before. “Tying me up? Or blindfolding me?”

Jean pauses and has to think about it. “I would be okay. I’ve never thought about it, but if you want me to… It feels awkward, but I’ll try.”

It isn’t the enthusiastic or sadistic reaction Armin always fantasized about, but it’s a whole lot better than a complete rejection of the idea.

“Want to try now?” Jean asks.

“I do!” is Armin’s over eager response. But first he throws his arms around Jean and covers his face in kisses, making him laugh lightly before looking around the room for something he can use to tie Armin’s hands to the headboard.

.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,,..,.,.,.,,..,.,.,.,

 

Erna doesn’t think Levi knew when he suggested it, but spending time with Raven really is the best therapy for her. It always has been. The tall, unpredictable bay horse is the only thing aside from a sound beating or a titan encounter that can truly get her outside of her own head.

They match each other perfectly. She never has to push her and can always count on her mare doing something crazy and dangerous that will keep Erna on her toes.

Raven makes her ride especially difficult because it’s late in the day, which means feeding time is soon, which means that this girl should get the fuck off of her back so that she can go get her grain on time. She tries everything she knows to try to throw Erna off. She pulls her head down, wrenching Erna’s shoulders as she tries to hold the reins tight and takes off at a gallop. She bucks, she spins, she rears, but Erna is pretty used to all of it. Not only is she used to it, but she can feel it about to happen. Raven can’t surprise her. She knows how it feels underneath her when the violent horse gathers her legs under her just before throwing her back legs up and kicking out. She sees it coming and leans forward and grabs fistfuls of Raven’s black mane just a fraction of a second before the horse stands up on her hind legs.

Eventually Raven settles down. She isn’t stupid. If she can’t throw her rider right out the gate, there’s not much point in tiring herself out trying the same things over and over. After the first six or seven minutes, she’s content to just take Erna on a terrifyingly fast gallop around the castle.

Erna feels incredibly lucky to make it back to the stable still firmly in the saddle. Usually it’s 50/50 whether or not she’ll end up needing to walk back after Raven throws her off and runs straight to the feed room or to go graze with the rest of the herd.

Her heart is still racing as she hand-walks her horse out and cools her down before putting her away. Just because she made it safely to the ground doesn’t ever mean she’s in the clear. Raven can kill her just as well whether she’s on the ground or on her back. She loves that about her. Raven, if she could talk, would say that she loves that Erna loves that about her. Most humans, when faced with her behavior would see it as something to correct, usually with beatings. Erna, instead, makes it her own responsibility to side-step out of the way of a kick or plant her feet and hold onto the lead-rope tight when Raven tries to bolt. But she’s never raised a hand to her. She seems to agree with Raven that they are playing a very fun game.

 

 

Erna is sore and exhausted and feels much better as she goes back to the castle. Her first thought is to get something for Levi – tea or something to eat – but then she remembers that the consideration is coming from a place of guilt and he won’t like it. She should try to go back to feeling normal. Or behaving the way she did before he caught her being an irresponsible, selfish little brat. So she checks the time and goes to the dining hall to eat dinner with her friends.

Sasha greets her with, “Missed you yesterday. Were you hanging out with Jean and Armin?”

“No,” Erna is confused at the assumption. “Why?”

“They weren’t here either, and your neighbors now right?”

“Oh yeah. I forgot. Nah, I didn’t see them. Just didn’t feel like coming to dinner last night.”

She tries to sound normal, but she can hear the moroseness in her voice. She’s too tired and still too down to play normal. She notices that Jean and Armin aren’t there tonight either. Maybe they don’t plan on eating in the dining hall anymore now that they could just eat alone in their apartment. She doesn’t know why she doesn’t do that more often.

“We totally deserve apartments too,” Connie complains. “We’re veterans.”

“Doesn’t mean shit if you’re not a squad leader,” Eren says disappointedly.

Erna realizes that nobody is going to notice her gloomy mood, because they’re all in gloomy moods of their own. Lovely.

She’s just about to say that they should ask Erwin if there are any empty apartments not being used by squad leaders, but then she remembers that now is not a good time to ask Erwin anything. The thought makes her stomach twist apprehensively and she isn’t very hungry anymore.

 

When she gets back, Levi greets her from his place on the couch. “You must be feeling better. No tea or other peace offerings?”

Erna tilts her chin up and rolls her shoulders back a little, standing up taller. “No. You said not to feel guilty, so I don’t,” she says primly. It’s a lie, but she thinks she pulls it off.

He’s not overly impressed, but he doesn’t call her out for lying. Instead he says, “Crawl over here then.”

Erna gets down on her hands and knees and crawls. It feels natural. It makes her finally feel more normal again, much more than any of the other things she was attempting to set her mind and mood back to normal. She sits up on her knees in front of him and he holds her gaze in silence for a few moments. Finally, he leans forward and hooks his fingers lightly in the black, leather collar she wears.

Quietly and almost rhetorically, he says, “You never take this thing off, do you?”

Originally the collar was unbearable when it still had the little silver bell on the front of it, but after Levi cut that off in a rage, Erna grew quite fond of it. He’d taken the lock off of the back of it leaving her free to unbuckle it and take it off whenever she wanted, but she only did so to shower or to clean the leather. She doesn’t know why, but wearing it makes her feel comforted.

She tilts her chin up, showing her neck proudly. “I like it.”

Levi agrees somewhat. He counters, “I like that it shows that you’re mine.”

Erna watches his eyes get darker. It makes her feel a little anxious in a good way – excited.

He looks at her very sternly, pulling at the collar with a little more pressure, silently daring her to sit up when she’s supposed to be kneeling. Her neck arches to ease the pressure without letting the rest of her body move. He asks her, “If I gave you something of mine to take care of, would you be careful with it?”

She swallows and says very clearly without hesitation, “Yes.”

He twists the collar in his fingers and pulls her up, closer to his face. “And when you were being reckless with your own life, did you forget that I own you?”

And though there’s a certain measure of threat in his voice, Erna feels more happy than anxious about it. This is their normal. This is much better to her than the reassurances and comfort of the past two days.

“Are you going to answer me?”

Erna feels more relaxed than she has in a long time and she melts a little, slumping down so that her collar is putting more pressure on her neck. “I didn’t forget, I don’t think… I just wasn’t thinking about it at the time…”

“That’s the same as forgetting, brat.”

She arches her back and tries to be cute, leaning forward and brushing herself against his legs. “I guess I forgot then. I’m sorry, Sir. It won’t happen again.”

“Tch.” He lets go of her collar and smirks. “Get cleaned up, and when you’re done go lie down on the bed. I’m going to make sure you never forget again.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


	29. Purging

Sometimes, even the buzz of anticipation isn't enough to fight Erna's exhaustion. That's why, after finishing his tea, Levi finds her naked and asleep in the dimly lit bedroom. He almost laughs to himself. It isn't surprising to him that she fell asleep with the emotionally draining day she had, and he wonders how long she fought to keep her eyelids open while he was out in the living room making her wait.

He stares at her sprawled form, limp, limbs tangled like a rag doll that was dropped carelessly on the bed. He starts to undress to go to sleep himself rather than wake her. She wakes all on her own anyway, abruptly and with a violent jolt that almost sets her fully upright. Her eyes snap wide open and fix on him with a hurried, "Sorry!"

Levi stops untying his cravat and tells her, "You're allowed to fall asleep when you're tired, idiot."

She pulls her knees under her and shakes her head dramatically, blinking the sleep away. "M'awake now. What're we doing?"

He smiles slightly while she rubs her eyes and shakes her head again like she can physically remove her exhaustion that way. He teases her. "You're tired. It can wait. Go back to sleep."

"Noooo," she whines, "Now."

Levi leans down, palms on the bed. He brings his face very close to hers and looks her dead in her big, grey, drowsy eyes.

There was a time when he could intimidate her with just a look and make her blush and stare at her feet. Now, any look from him, even if he's being intimidating, just makes her eyes light up and her shoulders roll back as she leans into him expectantly. Instead of uttering whatever threat he had in mind, he sees the eagerness burning in her eyes and closes what little distance is left to kiss her.

He expects her to brace herself and freeze in confusion, because he never kisses her. He always has too many better ideas to waste either of their time on kissing, especially when there are more interesting uses for her lips that he can think of, but she melts and moans into his mouth. Desperation arches her back and pushes her up and into him and makes her nails dig lightly into the back of his neck as she licks at his lips.

She crashes her teeth against his with a little too much ardor. He appreciates her eagerness, but when she gets too close to tipping the scales of power exchange and gets a little too grabby and demanding, it lights an instinctive rebellion in him. When her fingers rake over the back of his neck to grab at the collar of his shirt, he gives her lower lip a sharp bite to put her back in her place. She still forgets herself, the biting doesn't necessarily deter her, and she pulls him closer by his collar. He has to grab both of her wrists in his hands and push her back with a growl.

Her eyes widen and blink in awe, as if she isn't sure what just came over her either.

Levi lets go of her and stretches back up to stand at the edge of the bed. He's getting sidetracked and pulled in again by her wet, lightly bruised lips.

She murmurs wonderingly, "You never kiss me."

"You don't normally like it," he counters. Despite uninformed stereotypes surrounding their relationship dynamic, he doesn't actually get much pleasure out of making her do things she truly doesn't like.

She blushes and lowers her eyes as she admits, "I'm a lot more needy lately."

"I've noticed," is an understatement. She's been more desperate for approval from him than ever, and he doesn't like it. He would find it cute if it weren't for the wrong reasons. "When are you going to stop feeling guilty?"

"Shouldn't I feel guilty?"

He growls internally about his question being answered with another question. It's hard to suppress the reaction in him that automatically tells him to punish her as his submissive little masochist. They're not there yet.

"Only up to a point," he tells her patiently after swallowing down any nascent frustration. He explains, "Have regrets, but don't carry guilt with you to punish yourself forever."

He can see her heart sink. There's a physicality that makes it visible. It's the way her shoulders curl inward and her chin tucks down. It's in the wet glaze over her eyes as they lose focus, and its audible when she whines defeatedly, "It's hard."

Levi can't pretend to know what it's like to be submissive or masochistic. He only knows things from the other end of the spectrum. He's been coming around more and more, as he's watched her struggle, to the idea that maybe he can't really know what's best for her. Maybe he should trust her more on what she thinks is necessary for her own healing.

It's hard to actually put it that way to her, because stupid pride.

She looks back up at him for his reaction with her eyes all wide and almost pleading. Levi's lips form a tight line before his hands find his hairline and fingers card into his hair to pull it back and away from his forehead.

"Do you still think you'd feel better if I hurt you?"

"Mm-hmm," she hums adamantly, but she looks down again like she's ashamed, because by now she's expecting another refusal and probably another lecture about why he isn't going to do that.

But who the fuck is he to refuse her if it's what she needs? "Listen," he says, and she looks up again. "I'm still not mad at you, but if punishing you would give you some kind of closure..."

"Yeah?" she asks hesitantly, like it's a trap.

"Only if you know that it's because you want me to. Don't project your anger at yourself onto me."

"I won't," she promises, perking up considerably.

"I'll do whatever you need, but you need to get it all out of your system tonight. I'm not doing this again," he cautions her

Erna regards Levi silently, and she thinks about his proposition. Then, she smiles and says coyly, "Your arm is going to get tired."

"We'll see," he smirks. "What's your weapon of choice?"

For once, Levi is the one whose eyes widen slightly with curious anticipation as he waits for her answer. This is the most control he's ever given her, and in a rare turn of events he can't really predict what she's going to do. He watches her look around the room and consider her options before fixing her gaze back on him and flashing him a crooked grin. She shuffles on her knees closer to the edge of the mattress and reaches for him. It's so hard to hold still, to let himself be manipulated and not slap her hands away with a warning about being presumptive and eager. He has to watch and force himself to hand over the initiative as she pulls at the waist of his pants and undoes his belt. He's about to tell her that fucking her senseless doesn't seem like a punishment if that's what she's going for, but then she whips the belt off, and, instead of dropping it and moving on to work on removing other articles of his clothing, she holds the strip of leather out to him.

"That's it?" he asks as he takes the belt from her hands.

"It's light," she says matter of factly. "This is going to take a while. Don't want you to get tired."

"Me?" he nearly growls. "Get tired?" It's a preposterous thought.

Erna smiles sweetly, except he should know by now it isn't real. It's manipulative, sharp, and subtle. It's her having learned that he doesn't like her calling him an old man. It's the way she ignites a spark without revealing the flint in her hand. She doesn't do it often, because her partner is just as smart - too smart to let her get away with most things. His eyes flash with recognition, and he plays her game, hand shooting to grab her by a fistful of her short, black curls and pretending to really take offense at the implication.

Her body twists to the side and she moans into the mattress he's suddenly forced her face down into with a furious speed and energy. With her knees still planted on the comforter and her hips up, he folds the belt in half and smacks the lower part of her cheeks with it, the part that will hurt the most. He doesn't hold anything back, doesn't warm her skin up at all, just punctuates every one of his words with vicious cracks, so quick that she can hear the cut of the air that lets her know what's coming only a tenth of a second early every time.

"I'm in much better shape than you," he reminds her as he turns her white skin bright, hot, red, "and I have a lot more experience." He has to raise his voice to be sure he's being heard over her anguished cries that are getting higher pitched and more breathless with every merciless whip of the belt, "And I still wouldn't have done anything as stupid and reckless as what you did," he growls, fisting her hair a little harder in his other hand and stifling her whimpering whine by pushing her face down a little harder into the comforter.

He forgets why he ever had any reservations about this as he untangles his fingers from her hair, letting her turn her head and breathe unhindered, and he feels an insistent throbbing bulging under his pants at the sight of the stinging scarlet lines of pain heating up her ass and thighs. Whatever conscience he had about this is gone by the time she's caught her breath and is panting, mouth open to try and speak.

"I'm… I'm…"

"Too fucking reckless with your own life?" he fills in for her as he slaps the strip of leather against her shoulder with a crack and watches her flinch, curling in on herself slightly, as he then switches to the other shoulder and works his way down each side of her spine until pink meets the bright red over her round cheeks and smoothly muscled thighs.

The blows to her back aren't as punishing as what he started with. That would be dangerous. There are more ways to cause lasting damage with too much force near the spine and lower back. It stings, but gives Erna a chance to recover from the mind-numbing, nerve-burning hits he started with, and she's able to blurt out, "Sorry… I'm sorry."

A husky growl rumbles through Levi's chest. He delivers one more sharp smack to the upper part of her thighs, right under the bottom crease of her ass, so hard that her skin puffs up with a welt instantly, and she cries at how it burns. While her abdomen contracts and makes her spine curl and arch in rhythm with breathless gasps, he snarls, "I've already heard that you're sorry." He makes her body jerk forward with another lash, just below the welts. "Don't waste my fucking time with more apologies," he warns in a low voice.

The sound of the belt splits the air again. Her hand covers her mouth so she can scream without anyone beyond the apartment hearing.

Levi keeps moving her. If she wanted the belt, then she's going to feel it everywhere. He pushes her knees apart and lifts her shoulders to set her up on all fours and get at her inner thighs. She cries high and shrill in a way that lets him know it really hurts, not just in the good way, but in that conflicted way where he can tell that she's already wondering if she can take anymore…and his arm isn't anywhere near tired.

He crushes her upper arm in a strong grip and flips her onto her back, giving her a moment to hiss as her raw skin hits the bed, before slapping the underside of her left breast. The leather curls and kisses the curve of her small, perky tit and makes it shake. It makes her howl. He saved this for last because it would be the most painful. He loves how sensitive her little tits are. They're such an incredible weakness, so easy to exploit, it almost isn't fair. Her entire back arches off of the bed, and his focus shifts to her eyes, anguished and shining with tears.

She could stop him so easily. It would only take a word. Not even something specific like a safe word, but anything… 'Enough.' 'No.' 'Stop.' Anything.

She only whimpers pathetically as she blinks and her wet tears break over her eyelashes, small streams pouring more silver from her sparkling grey eyes. If Levi weren't what he is, he would feel heart-clenching concern. Instead, those tears make his blood hot with a sadistic lust. He sees her buck off of the bed as the strip of sharply malleable leather makes her other tit bounce, and the brutal, dark, animalistic side that he has never been able to shake needs to rip her apart and mark her with all he can give. She looks up at him, lips parted and gasping and her eyes full of the good kind of apprehension and anxiety, as they shift to his hand and watch for the next strike.

For as long as she'll keep surrendering, he needs to keep hurting her. He'll push her and test her and use her willing body as a blank slate to carve his black soul into, and he'll fit himself into her need to be used and pushed and taken apart. He'll make her raw and exposed until her eyes glimmer with past hurts that he's still trying to purge from her. When she lets them go and sobs in a crashing wreck of catharsis, that will be his redemption.

He bites the soft, tender flesh of her tits with the belt, careful to avoid the most sensitive part, missing her nipples and turning the skin around them almost the same shade of pink. He keeps up his assault and watches her fingers dig into the blanket and twist the fabric in her fists. She tries to catch her breath but is defeated by three rapid lashes across the tops of her tits, making her cry in agony. It's still not enough to make her release the weight of the world and give up her guilt.

Levi frowns as he watches her shut her eyes tight. Her face contorts under his torture, and he realizes he shouldn't have made this deal with her, because it's never going to be enough. He could strip her soft skin off and make her bleed, and she still wouldn't have what she needs.

Knowing that it will be the last hit, he cuts the air and lets the belt finally hit one of her achingly stiff nipples. She screams and lets go of the sheets to cross her arms protectively over her chest as she curls away from him and onto her side.

"You think that's enough?" he deadpans emotionlessly, as if he's asking about the weather while he lets his hand fall to rest the belt against his thigh.

"N-nooo," she whimpers, because she knows that even though she's reached her body's threshold for pain, the guilt is still there and she'll need more soon enough. "I'm sorry."

The belt falls to the floor. The clink of the metal buckle against the stone still reverberating in the air as Levi takes her small, delicate wrist and lifts her, dragging her across the bed and growling, "Say you're sorry one more fucking time…"

"But I-"

"On your feet," he snaps, pulling her off the edge, knowing that without the order she would let herself fall and crumble to the floor. She stands weakly. He twists her arm, pushing her in front of him to the bathroom, where he lets her go before shoving her. Her hands grip the porcelain sides of the pedestal sink, bracing herself before she cracks her head against the wall.

Levi gets momentarily distracted by the sight of her back bared to him again. The lines of pain stand out more, now that the skin around the welts has had time to lose its flush. Seeing the brutal aftermath makes his cock swell. He runs a single finger over the back of a thigh and up, drawing a hiss out through her gritted teeth. His eyes are drawn to the shining wetness coating her inner thighs, and his finger strays toward it, feeling the combined heat of her core with the burn of the stripes he painted over her skin. She moans and cants her hips back toward him, begging him to push inside and fill her. The intense need to do so shocks him into remembrance of what he brought her in here for. Feral lust has to wait, because he isn't good enough to be giving after he's emptied his built up wrath.

He roughly cups and squeezes one side of her tender ass and fists her hair, lifting her face to the mirror over the sink, and he tells her to look at herself. He watches her reflection over her shoulder and refuses to let go of her until she obeys the seemingly simple command. She doesn't like mirrors. Her eyes flick away every time she tries to look straight ahead. She winces and whimpers as his fingers curl and pull her hair tighter, and finally she settles, her eyes focusing on her own face, flushed and wet with streams of tears. The breath she was holding escapes in a wet, strangled stutter.

Levi releases her hair but watches her to be sure she stays focused. "Discipline only means something if you learn from it." His hand loosens its grip on her rounded ass to caress her stinging skin with a calloused palm to set a wider expanse of nerves ablaze. "If you want my approval so badly, then tell me what you learned."

She hesitates, so he curls his fingers and rakes the edges of his short, blunt nails over a puffy, red hot line of leather-stung skin.

"I learned to be more careful," she squeaks, "and not selfish…"

"Why?"

Her gaze shifts to look for his face instead of her own in the mirror, but the severity she finds in his eyes warns her to quickly look straight ahead again and answer without looking to him for a hint.

"Because I don't want to hurt you…"

There's too much of a question behind her words. It isn't the right answer, anyway. He lets her know by lifting his hand to deliver a sharp smack to the crease where her cute, round ass meets her thighs, right where she'd been whipped the hardest, because it's one of his favorite parts of her body to inflict his darkness on.

She leans forward on her hands and winces, then rocks back again, almost following his hand as it abandons her. She searches for his eyes again while he tells her in a low, deadpan voice, "If that were true, you wouldn't have done it in the first place. You already knew it would hurt me."

Her lips part, and he warns her before the predictable words come out of her mouth, "And don't tell me you didn't think you'd get caught. You're not that dumb."

"I…" She starts, then stops.

He allows her to look away from her reflection for the sake of making it easier for her to think for a moment. Her eyes turn away, as if her thoughts are somewhere off to the side. She admits, quietly and ashamed, "I didn't think it would hurt you so much," and she winces, expecting punishment for another wrong answer.

He can't punish her for finally being honest. One of his hands curls gently around her waist and holds her as he pushes his hips against her, letting her know she's getting closer to absolution. He grinds the bulge of his stiff cock against her ass, ready to erase all of her sins with his own if she's willing to take an honest look at the things she doesn't like to admit, the things that she keeps buried and out of the way.

"Open your eyes," he growls and pulls her out of the dreamy relaxation that was about to overtake her while she rocked back against him and moaned at the friction. He tilts her head back by her hair and forces her to look at her reflection again. "You're not done."

She whines, "But I-"

He cuts her off with a smack to her ass that makes her flinch, because he doesn't need her to tell him that she needs it. He knows how much she needs him inside her right now. It's all the more incentive for her to try harder for once.

A shiver snakes its way up her spine, and her eyelids flutter. He allows her to spread her legs and arch her back to push against him all she wants, as long as she keeps her eyes fixed on the mirror. She whines with frantic urgency when she hears him pop the button of his pants and move the fabric out of the way. She tries to turn her head and look at what she wants so badly, but he jerks her head back by her hair again.

"So?" He pushes his pants down just enough with one hand, not letting go of her hair. He hardly needs to strip fully to get inside her, and she likes when he doesn't bother. She likes to be the one who's more exposed. While she tries to calm her overwhelming need to be broken and think of the right words to say, he looks down at his fingers that are wrapped around his cock and angles it to point at the slick he can see shining and barely starting to drip down her legs.

He taps the head of his cock against the inside of her thigh, not close enough to where she aches to be touched. He slides lewdly against her, smearing his length with the wetness coating the skin of her soft inner thigh and leans forward. He grunts a dry, husky reminder against the juncture of her vulnerable neck and her shoulder. "You must have learned something new from all this."

"I learned that…" She moans as his cock unintentionally brushes against her wet cunt. "Unhh." She whines about how hard it is to think, and she looks away from her reflection again, searching his eyes for her answer as he grazes his teeth against her neck.

"I learned that you need me."

Teeth sink into her neck and pull until the skin drags from his grasp. His fingers spread her open, making sure she's hot and wet and ready, before he drives his cock into her like a nail. He won't put up with any resistance this time. He breathes out a silent, cruel laugh at how ready her cunt is, and, as he lines himself up with her, he drags his fingers over the welts on her ass before gripping a cheek firmly in his hand. Her entire body rocks forward and then back towards the pain he inflicts, needing it to soothe her aching soul.

She's so right about how much he needs her. She is his haven, his prey, his toy, steadfast in her role and never faltering, the only witness to the dark sins that she rips from his hands. Only she can see the vulnerability of his blackened soul, and even with the knowledge that he's just a man, not Humanity's Strongest Soldier, she trusts him unquestionably to tear her down and inflict his order on her anyway.

He wraps a hand around her throat after pushing all his need inside her, splitting her apart and filling her. He won't let her escape even an inch as he assaults her wet cunt.

She needs to know that she serves a purpose. He bites down on the back of her neck to show her that she's worth putting back together every time.

Even with the pressure of his hand over her throat, she cries out and sees her breath obscure her reflection in the mirror with fog. Suddenly, she can breathe. He releases her throat to grab her hair instead to arch her back toward him painfully, balancing her on her toes, as he digs his fingers into her hip and attempts to stop her movement while he drives into her hard and deep and faster with every thrust.

It doesn't take long at all before she's begging and pleading only semi-coherently, saying, "Please…" again and again, without any actual request following.

Levi lets go of her hair, lifts her hips, and pulls them down, frantically gripping and positioning to get deeper inside. He tells her, "Yeah… Fuck… Go ahead."

He thinks she's begging permission to come. He's wrong. She doesn't care about her own pleasure. She desperately wants him to come. All she can think about is pleasing him. When his hands grip her ass cheeks to pull her into every thrust, she pushes up onto her toes, raising her hips for him, taking him harder and deeper until she feels him shudder. She remembers to look back up, because she can use the mirror to watch his face while he comes inside her.

He pulls out quickly, not that it corrects the mistake.

"Shit…" he mutters under his breath.

"It's okay," she coos contentedly, though she makes a disgusted face immediately after when she feels it dripping down her leg.

She feels more than hears his silent laugh behind her, and she turns around, crossing her arms as if nothing is funny and pouts.

"Cute," he tells her.

"Shut up."

He reaches past her for a wash cloth and circles her in his arms as he wets it under the sink behind her. He cleans her thighs as he mutters, "You swallow it without complaining."

"That's different," she hums under his gentle care.

He runs the bath and pulls her into it with him, holding her close against his chest, until she wiggles and squirms and turns around, getting up on her knees and curling over him. Her fingers trail dreamily over every one of his scars, from his arms, down over his abs and his legs as she kisses his neck and his lips and tells him again and again that she loves him in an affectionate, submissive frenzy.

"Yeah, I know, brat." He grabs her around the waist and pulls her into him with a jerk. He rubs his nose against her cheek and reassures her, "Relax. You're a good toy."

"Yeah?" she whimpers.

"Very good," he says after grazing a bruise on her neck with his teeth. "Do you feel better?"

She hums and lets him turn her around again. This time, she settles back against him and relaxes. "Better than I've felt in a long time."

"Good," he whispers and rests his chin on her hair. "I live to make you better."


	30. Limit Pushing

"You can't do that!" Erna yells across Erwin's desk, shocked and incensed, surprising herself with her own outburst and quickly covering her mouth with her hands.

She'd arrived at his summons penitent and very much ready to accept whatever punishment he deemed appropriate for what she'd done, but she'd thought it would be…not this.

He narrows his deep blue eyes at her slightly, frowning, and reminding her, "I'm your Commander, and I can. Your promotion will be effective tomorrow."

"But…" she sputters. "That's not…" She stands up from her chair, at a complete loss for words. "You can't make me a team leader! I'm the opposite of a leader! I'm a…a...bad influence!" She prays for his face to soften, for him to change his mind, to see that she's right. This is the worst idea. But his expression doesn't change. Not even a little. Not even to acknowledge that she's having a panic attack in front of his desk. He only waits silently to make sure that she's done with her tantrum.

She isn't.

"I don't know what I'm doing. I can't tell other people what to do. I make shitty decisions all the time. What if I get people killed?"

"You wouldn't be the first," Erwin answers nonchalantly, as if casualties aren't something to get so upset about.

"But…"

He waits to shoot down whatever new objection she has, but Erna's mouth only hangs open silently. "Yes?" he prompts her.

"I don't want to!" She stamps her boot on the stone floor, proving, at least to herself, that she's too childish for this whole thing.

His eyebrows lower again with the starting impression of a scowl. "Where did you get the idea that I'm here to give you things you want to do?"

She changes her tone and begs, "Please?" She adds hurriedly as he starts to look down at some papers on his desk, the usual signal that he's done talking, "I'll do anything else! Literally anything!"

"If you won't accept the promotion, I can grant you an honorable discharge," he deadpans without even looking up at her.

Erna's jaw drops, along with her heart and her gut. She feels dizzy and sick. She has more begging and more excuses in her, but Erwin is a force of stubbornness she can't contend with, so she gives up and says, "Yes, sir," to the polished desktop.

She takes the small stack of folders he offers her. "These are files on the recruits who are now under you."

"What do I do with them?"

"Read them?"

"No, I mean…" Erna looks down at the folders in her hand blankly. "What do I do with…them?"

"The recruits? You train them. They take orders from you, you take orders from squad leaders." Erwin pinches the bridge of his nose. "You've been here too long to not know how this works."

"Never thought about it before," she murmurs, still in shock.

Erwin's expression softens, and he becomes less adversarial as she starts to accept his decision. "I trust you with this…more than I trust you with your own well being. And I'm hoping," he says, his voice eyes softening and giving her a more paternal look, "being responsible for others will help you learn to be more responsible with yourself."

All Erna wonders is whether she can get out of this if she does well with the whole responsibility thing. Now doesn't seem like the right time to ask, but if this is about making her more accountable, then, maybe, if she can show that she's learned to be much more careful with her life and curbed her adrenaline addiction, he might let her off the hook.

When he gets up from his desk and moves past her to open the door of his office, clearly signaling that the discussion is over, she shuffles to the threshold, asking one last question under her breath, "How is a promotion supposed to be a punishment anyway?"

"Based on your reaction," Erwin says, startling her with his sharp hearing, "I'd say it's a pretty good one."

She lets out a frustrated little "Hmph," and leaves to find somewhere isolated to pout and feel sorry for herself. She nearly runs into Hange, who saves her from the crash by grabbing her shoulder while she's looking down at the folders in her hand.

"Erna! I'm glad I ran into you," she says in a rush, anxiously looking past her to Erwin's quickly closing office door. She maneuvers one of her long legs to get her foot in the door without releasing her grip on the short girl's shoulder. Erna can hear Erwin's exasperated sigh as he stops short of crushing Hange's foot.

The bespectacled pseudo-scientist shoves her shoulder against the office door, meeting some resistance from the other side, while taking a brown paper-wrapped packet from inside her jacket and holding it out to Erna. "Can you give this to Levi for me?"

Erna takes it while Hange swings her shoulder hard into the door to make enough space to get through. "What is it?"

"Oh, it's just…tea…" she says while struggling to force her way into Erwin's office. Finally she gets just enough of an opening to slip her slender frame through, and the door slams shut behind her. Erna can hear Erwin's exasperated sigh join Hange's cheery, "Soooo, you have a minute to talk?"

Erna goes back to her empty apartment to toss the package onto the coffee table in the living room first. She doesn't share even a little of Levi's obsession with the stuff and doesn't want to be carrying it around like a damn courier.

A heavy sigh vacuums the air from her lungs as she thinks about how this is her last day of freely fucking around without any specific responsibilities. The folders slip from her fingers and papers scatter on the floor. She feels overwhelmingly tired, like her heart can't find the energy to beat. She knows that she should pick them up and read up on her recruits, but she doesn't want to. She'd rather walk into this panic-inducing situation completely blind than spend one second of preparation making it real and coming anywhere near accepting it.

All she can bring herself to do is run away. Not even very far. She only drags herself as far as the kitchen to make herself some coffee, because she feels like she's going to pass out.

Sadly, it isn't a good hiding spot as Sasha is already there washing the dishes from that morning, which is usually a job for at least four people together on kitchen staff, but she's alone and still elbow deep in one of the big sinks and looks like she has been for hours.

"You get caught trying to steal food again?" she asks, startling Sasha, who hadn't heard her come in.

"No… I don't know…" she answers. "I didn't get a reason. Levi just told me I'm washing dishes for the foreseeable future. He was pissed. Like, a lot more than usual. But he didn't say why."

Erna shrugs. That's not necessarily unusual, except that he has a good poker face in public. He's strictly non-emotive when he's working, even with her. She's a little curious as to how pissed off he seemed to Sasha and how she could tell.

"Didn't even steal any food," Sasha grumbles while Erna gets a tightly sealed jar of ground coffee beans and starts boiling water. "Can't you, like, talk to him?" Sasha asks in frustration as a greasy plate slips out of her grasp and disappears into the sudsy water.

"Is that ethical?" Erna wonders contemplatively.

"Huh?" Sasha grunts impatiently, not really listening for anything but the affirmative answer she wants.

Erna rubs her temples. It's not like she cares about ethics. She just doesn't want to. It's not like she and Levi talk about her friends/his squad on a regular basis. She makes the excuse, "It would come off as me questioning his authority, and it wouldn't go well. Just get used to wrinkled, soapy hands."

"Great, thanks."

Erna hears the door swing open and turns around, locking eyes with Connie who is already flattening himself against the wall like he's trying to hide.

"What are you doing?" she deadpans.

Connie pants, trying to catch his breath while he answers, "Hiding… Levi…"

"You too?" Sasha says over her shoulder.

"He's on a warpath," Connie gasps.

Erna raises an eyebrow. This is starting to get intriguing. She hasn't seen Levi in an actual bad mood in a pretty long time.

"What did you do?" Connie asks her accusatorily.

"Me?" Erna is offended. "I didn't do anything. He was in a good mood when he left this morning."

"How can you tell?" Sasha mutters sarcastically as she rinses off a glass.

Erna scoops a spoonful of coffee into a mesh basket, sets it over her mug, and pours the boiling water over it slowly. She answers Sasha's rhetorical question stoically, "Because he woke me up by fucking my mouth until he came."

Connie whimpers against the wall near the door and whatever Sasha might have to say is drowned out by the sound of a glass shattering. Erna takes her coffee and walks away saying, "So if he's in a mood, it's because of you nerds, not me."

Once out in the hallway, she decides to go look for Levi. It will be a good distraction, anyway.

It turns out that he's hard to find when he's angry. As she wanders headquarters, blowing steam off of her coffee, she only finds the terrified people left in his wake. Her curiosity grows with each trembling recruit she finds handling a mop or broom or dust cloth with shaky hands. She even tries to remember that morning, since she'd been lying to Sasha and Connie. He rarely had time to play with her in the morning anymore because neither of them would be satisfied with anything that took less than an hour. Early-morning face-fucking wasn't a thing. They both knew it would lead to at least three other forms of abuse and drawn out torture that would make him very late to start work. But still, she saw him, they talked, and there wasn't anything about him that made her think he was in a bad mood when he left.

Her search finally takes her back to the apartment where she hesitates and only lets her fingers rest gently on the doorknob. She left her responsibility in there. Those files she was supposed to read are there on the floor and she'd still like to avoid them, but when she hears a crash from inside her curiosity overrides her anxiety and she bursts through the door.

Luckily, she can't even see the papers she left on the floor. They're covered by messy piles of couch cushions and other debris. Her first impression is that someone must have broken in until she hears Levi shout, "Fuck!" and switches her gaze from the mess on the floor up to him standing by the fireplace and emptying out a small wooden box that usually rests on the mantle.

"Um… Everything okay…?"

His eyes fix on her, and he glares icily. "Did you touch my fucking tea?"

"What?" Is her only response, because it's so outside the realm of possibility in her mind. What would she want with his tea? She hates the stuff.

Suddenly, without any build-up or slow transition, his face twists with rage. The little wooden box in his hand flies across the room with so much force that it splinters and breaks into pieces when it hits the opposite wall. Erna presses her back against the door behind 's seen him get irritated, but not like this.

"Did you let anyone in here?" he asks without any of the emotion that was just there a second ago, his voice cold and dark and completely unsettling.

"I mean…" Erna hesitates, "We always leave the door unlocked…" Which is true, because why not? Not many people bother to lock the doors to their rooms or worry about their things being taken.

He scowls at her, then winces and holds his forehead. "Fuck!"

"Are you okay?" she asks carefully, with her hand hovering near the doorknob in case he throws something at her.

"Headache," he mutters. "Someone took my fucking tea."

She opens her mouth, then closes it. She'd been about to ask if he checked the kitchen, but of course that would be a dumb question. That's the first place she would look. Then she remembers the package Hange gave her and she steps toward the center of the room, carefully reaching for the coffee table,keeping her eyes on him and saying as soothingly as she possibly can, "Hange gave me some tea this morning. She asked me to give it to you."

She flinches and closes her eyes as he takes three long strides over to her, but the only violent thing he does is roughly snatch the package out of her hands and tear the paper apart.

"Get me a carafe of hot water," he says quietly, but with underlying malice..

Erna leaves the room quickly, never turning her back on those cold, murderous eyes, and breaks into a run for the kitchen downstairs. She returns as quickly as possible with water that burned her finger when she tested to make sure it was hot enough before pulling it from the stove. Levi's sitting on the couch and holding his head while tapping a straining spoon on a tea tray set in front of him on the coffee table.

He doesn't say anything as she fills his teacup.

Erna leaves the water on the table and looks around the room while Levi waits for his tea to steep. It looks like a very large wild animal got inside and had a fit. She isn't surprised he was able to do so much damage, just that he lost his self control to such an extent. She thinks back to her own tantrum when Sasha had stolen the coffee from the kitchen and decides it wasn't nearly as bad as this. She wants to ask him what happened, but her instinct tells her to keep her mouth shut until he has actually finished his tea. His demeanor speaks of barely contained violence. It makes her feel uneasy. She starts cleaning up as best she can, hoping that will placate him.

She starts with the broken things. Fear keeps her from making any irritated noises of disgust about his tantrum, though they're right underneath her tongue, and when he doesn't look so much like a cold-blooded sociopath, she's going to give him an earful about controlling his temper.

… Because she's one to talk. She can already predict how he'll point out the irony of her lecturing him about self control, but still… He probably has ten years on her. He should be the more mature one. At the very least she can feel justifiably indignant that he's sitting there sipping his precious tea and letting her clean up his mess.

She seethes in her head while he just watches her sweep broken shards of wood and glass into a pile and is about to lose her own temper and tell him that she isn't his fucking maid. The only thing that stops her is that look in his eyes when she comes around the front of the couch and checks what she can see of his expression behind his hand and tea cup. It looks like he could actually cut her head off and not feel any remorse about it. She keeps her displeasure to herself until there's a knock at the door. She can't help shooting Levi a look, crossing her arms, and waiting for him to answer it.

When Levi makes absolutely no move to even acknowledge the knocking at the door, she rolls her eyes and cocks a hip. "No, don't get up. I'll get it," she says sarcastically.

"Tell them to fuck off," he mutters into his tea before draining the cup in a scalding gulp and refilling it.

Erna opens the door to reveal Erwin, and, for once, they have a moment of shared exasperation together instead of toward each other. She steps to the side and turns to look over her shoulder at Levi, pointing at Erwin with her thumb. "You want me to tell him to fuck off?"

Erwin steps inside with Levi scowling at him. "Do you want to tell me why nearly fifty recruits who would otherwise be working are cleaning various parts of the castle?"

"We're out of tea."

"That's not possible."

"Then someone took it. My stash is gone, too." He holds up his tea cup and adds, "I got this from Hange, and it's only enough to last a week, so you better have a plan."

"What do you expect me to do?" Erwin asks after closing his eyes and pinching the bridge of his nose.

"Find it." He takes another sip of tea, only just starting to slow down now that the caffeine is starting to take effect. "Or get more. I don't care."

"You could try scaling back—"

Levi doesn't let him finish. "Get the fuck out."

"Or at least—"

"Get the fuck out," Levi repeats through clenched teeth this time. "And find out who took my tea."

Erwin's square jaw clenches and he pauses, as if trying to choose his words carefully before speaking. He settles on a terse, "We'll talk more when you're feeling better."

Erna closes the door behind him and gets back to picking up the mess on the floor. She wishes Erwin could have seen Levi ten minutes ago. What he just saw was Levi feeling better.

"You know," she says while picking up the seat cushion to one of the arm chairs and shoving it back into place, "I was looking for you because I thought it would be fun to try and play with you when you're all angry."

"Yeah?" he says in his low, bored voice. "I was about to look for you because I thought you hid my tea to fuck with me."

She stands up straight and crosses her arms, truly offended that he would think she would do something so petty. She tilts her chin up defiantly, feeling very much like the only adult in the room. "Did it occur to you that maybe you drank it all?"

"No, but it occurred to me that this wouldn't be the first time you tried to get a rise out of me."

Fair enough, she thinks. "Well now that I know how addicted you are…"

"Everybody needs at least one vice." Levi puts down his second drained teacup.

She moves into his space now that he seems to be done treating his withdrawal and stands over him, planting each of her feet at the outside of his and looking down at him. In a low, sultry voice she purrs, "I would never try to make you lose your temper."

Levi seems to think on that for a second before agreeing, "No," and then hooks a finger under the slim black leather collar around her neck. "You're a good pet."

She swallows, and his eyes get darker, feeling her throat move under the back of his finger pressed against her neck. "But I do still like it when you lose your temper with me," she whines. "... a little… not enough to kill me…" His hand moves to hold the side of her neck, his thumb brushing over her throat, and she leans into it like a needy cat. "But I've been really good about not trying to manipulate you," she says longingly, obviously petitioning for some kind of reward.

Levi hums as he thinks about her behavior lately versus how much she used to try to make him angry. Ever since they'd had a talk about the level of respect and maturity he expected of her, she'd ceased any teasing or gaslighting, and, if she felt she wasn't being punished enough, she would talk to him about it instead of doing something to force his hand, like leaving her towel on the floor after a shower or tracking dirt into the apartment. He confirms, "You have been good."

Erna places her hands on the back of the couch behind his hard-muscled shoulders and puts her knees on the couch, straddling him and whining again. "But you don't lose your temper with me when I'm good, and I miss it." She pouts and tries to look very pitiful to hopefully get across how hard it is for her. "I want to be good, but…"

"You miss when I would get angry with you and kick you across the room," he says matter of factly, not turned on by the idea in the slightest. He hates losing his temper with her. It makes him feel out of control and monstrous.

"Uh-huh," she murmurs quietly, and her eyes close while she conjures an image in her head of how he looks when he is justifiably pissed at her, particularly the way his teeth look when he sneers at her with disgust. She makes her own cheeks flush with the thought and rocks her hips against him.

"Are you trying to have a real discussion about this with me? Or are you just being a horny little slut?"

His hard, unamused tone makes her open her eyes and clear some of the fog rolling in her head. "Kind of both… This is a real thing, but thinking about it makes me horny, and it's hard to stay focused." She adds a contrite, "Sorry," for not being able to communicate more clearly at the moment.

"Then we'll have to do something to get your focus back." He grunts quietly, barely a breath through his nose while reaching for the waist of her pants and giving them a light tug. She takes the hint eagerly and stands up to pull them off without being asked, letting them fall to the floor, just one more piece of debris to be picked up later.

He smirks at her as she goes to re-seat herself on his lap. "Shirt, too," he reminds her before she gets comfortable. He steadies her with one hand against her lower back while his other palm flattens against her abs and follows the hem of her shirt up, stopping between her breasts and pushing her slightly back once the thin tee is tossed over her shoulder. "I like looking at you."

She blushes at the emphasis on her exposure in contrast to his full uniform. She likes looking at him, too, she thinks, though whether he's wearing clothes or not is irrelevant to her gaze. Nakedness is less interesting than his movements and the tone of his voice when he's dominating her. He doesn't need to strip to make her feel small. Sometimes it's even better if he doesn't. It makes her feel like the more desperate one, like he's doing her a favor out of begrudging pity when he only opens the front of his pants enough to free his half-hard cock for her and patronize her with more than a trace of superiority, "Ride it until your head's cleared, ma petite salope."

Without even really touching her, he turns her into a needy mess, simply by implying that she is one. He keeps his expression flat for her, acting like she's the only one who needs it as she lowers her hips and rubs the wet lips of her cunt against the head of his cock, rocking back and forth until she feels it swell to full hardness. He stifles any reaction and remains passive but for wrapping his hand around the base of his shaft to hold it still for her as she searches with her hips for the right position, getting the head slippery when she presses back and makes it part her lips.

He doesn't say anything until after she lowers herself. She pretends not to see him bite the inside of his cheek to stop a groan of pleasure from escaping his mouth when she bears down. Her eyelids flutter and her lips fall open as she grinds against him, and she tints her moan with a needy little whimper behind it. When the dripping, swollen lips of her cunt reach his fingers still wrapped around the base of his cock, she lets out a full, desperate whine, rocking and grinding against them, begging him to get his hand out of her way. He fixes his apathetic gaze on her big, pleading eyes and makes her feel like a desperate whore in comparison as he moves unhurriedly to settle his arms on the back of the couch behind him. With an aloof stoicism, he bids her, "Go ahead and fuck yourself." When a shudder runs down her spine, he smirks coldly and mocks her. "Look at how badly you need it."

She sinks down the last three inches, and his cock disappears inside her as he bottoms out. Her eyes close and she revels in the nice, full feeling, simply holding herself there and contracting her muscles around him until he hisses impatiently. She opens her eyes to see him glaring at her. "Get on with it and make yourself come. I don't have all day."

She whimpers as she realizes the level of disinterest he's ready to feign. She normally counts on him to make her come, even to guide most of their actions. She hasn't been on top in a long time and the instinct to move doesn't hit her at first, but then he rolls his eyes at her and her skin burns with humiliation as a broken moan forces it's way out her throat. Urgent need makes her hips move forward, squeezing and grinding and desperately hoping for friction against her clit.

"That's better," he praises through gritted teeth. "Good pet. Show me how fucking desperate you are."

Erna hooks her toes under his knees and grinds her clit hard against his pubic bone,making her hips stutter unevenly. Her hands reach for his shoulders for a foundation to steady herself as she ruts against him, sliding up and forward, down and back. Soon, she can feel his cock jump inside her, betraying the completely disinterested expression on his face.

For a little while she fucks herself more for him than for her own need, because their needs are physiologically different, and it's hard to meet both when she's on top and he's refusing to participate beyond letting her use his cock. She tries to rise up and thrust back down in the deep, rhythmic tempo he would use to get himself off if he were holding her hips and fucking into her, but it's hard to maintain a rhythm when it doesn't do anything to stimulate her clit like he would normally be doing with his fingers by now. Her rhythm is perpetually off and inconsistent, drawing up and sliding back down either too hard or too fast or too slow. Then he has the gall to actually cover his mouth with the back of a hand and yawn at her.

"You going to finish yourself off soon?"

"Huh?" she huffs, and blinks away a bead of sweat that dripped to the corner of her eye. He stares at her with bored eyes and makes her skin burn bright red with humiliation from her hairline down to her chest. He looks so regal sitting back with his arms stretched over the back of the couch, and she is only a dirty, horny mess, riding him like an animal and wrinkling his perfect uniform. The thought makes her core contract hard around him, and she stops drawing herself up all the way and thrusting. Instead, she only bears down and grinds her clit against his pubic bone without any rhythm, only awkward stutters of her hips instinctively guiding her toward her oblivion.

He goads her on, "I wish you could see yourself rutting against me like a filthy whore," as if he's mildly amused and disgusted by her.

Suddenly she stops mid-grind and jerks forward, clutching at his shoulders and letting out a sharp, stuttering moan into the crook of his neck as she clenches around him in a quick, deep cadence of intense shivering contractions.

As she finishes, he breaks character and wraps his arms around her, one hand palming the back of her head as she gasps into his neck. He doesn't stop her from sliding up and off of him, but his hips seemingly unconsciously try to follow hers and he whispers, "Fuck…" as she raises herself off of him, leaving his cock wet and twitching in the open air.

All of the frantic need is drained out of her and she feels lazily content. "Thank you," she whimpers soft and pathetic into the skin of his neck as she catches her breath.

"Thought you'd like that," he hisses through his teeth as his cock twitches, painfully hard, aching with the lust he held back. His hand slides up her curved spine to grab her hair and pull her head away far enough to look her in the eye. "Now, get on your knees and let me fuck that dirty little mouth until you're ready for me to fill up your needy cunt again."

They move fluidly together, her sliding off of him and onto the floor as he stands up. He tangles both hands in her hair, paying no mind to the slight scrape of her teeth as he pushes his wet cock past her lips and starts thrusting hard all the way into her throat. "Let me show you how hard that was for me," he mutters under his breath as he lets loose all of the want he'd been hiding under a stoic facade put up to debase her. He closes his eyes and throws his head back as she starts to choke, and he feels his cock getting gripped and massaged by her throat. "Ahh, yeah," he sighs. Then he draws back to let her get a breath, and when her lungs are filled again, he pushes back in and starts fucking away once more, tightening his grip on her head. "Love using you as a toy." He tilts her head back to look up at him and slows down. Her cheeks hollow out, and he moans. "That's it," his fingers curl and tighten their grip on her hair. "Get a good taste." Her eyelids flutter shut as he pushes back into her throat, so deep that his pubic bone grinds against her nose, and, rather than look at her, he tilts his head back and waits, rubbing the sensitive head of his cock against the tightening muscles of her throat by tilting her chin up and down and around, massaging his cock without withdrawing until he hears muffled gagging and feels her spasming throat trying to push him out.

He lets go of her hair and watches her body spring back from him in a fit of gasping and fighting for much needed air. Before she's even filled her lungs again, she reaches up and grips at his thighs with a desperate clawing, looking up at him with her big eyes, begging him to keep using her. Her cheek rubs against the underside of his saliva-covered shaft while she licks apologetically at the base of his cock, letting her tongue slide up and then down to eagerly lap at his balls.

Her desperation and mindless enthrallment make white hot pressure coil inside him, and he can't look away or move a hand to stop her display of absolute worship. He's barely able to muster the presence of mind to close his eyes and wrap his thumb and forefinger around the base of his cock before he tips over the edge. He hisses a sharp inhale of breath as he takes a shuddering step back, escaping her wet tongue and cutting off his extremely close orgasm. His exhale comes out as a feral growl that matches the animal shrewdness of his narrowed eyes when he looks down at her pouting, swollen lips and orders her to get on the couch.

He lets go of his cock, almost numb from the ache of denial and watches his slave set herself on the couch demurely, sitting up, keeping her thighs closed and looking back at him innocently, eyes big and wet mouth soft with the hint of a smile as her tongue tastes her lips. Whether that look is an intentionally put on act or an accident on her part, he doesn't really care. Either way, it makes a fire consume his chest and beg to be let loose to raze her innocence and leave her a disheveled, ruined, thoroughly used and mindless fuck toy.

The tightness and pressure that had built up in his balls wanes as the frustration of cutting off his orgasm roars inside him. He lifts her easily by one ankle, opening her legs and forcing her to twist and fall onto her back on the couch as he makes space for his knees between her thighs. He lets go of her ankle, carelessly letting her leg fall to the floor as he grabs the other one, lifting it and hooking her knee over the back of the couch, spreading her wide open for him with her one hip angled up and hovering off the cushion. His hand then slides roughly down the inside of her thigh, bypassing the swollen pink lips of her cunt to instead rest on her stomach and feel it swell and shrink with her breathing. Her abs clench under his fingers as her tits rise and fall over deep breaths broken by whimpering. He imagines that she is panicked, and her wide eyes are gleaming with adrenaline and dread instead of want and need, because, much like she likes the look and the danger of him losing his temper, he likes seeing her panicked and uncertain of what will happen to her. She breaks that illusion when she reaches up for his jacket and tries to push it off his shoulders, tugging at the white shirt underneath as well, impatient for him to strip it off himself, so much greed behind her groping fingers that he has to growl at her, "Don't bother. This isn't going to last long."

He waits for her to pout and whine before cutting off her mewling by lining his cock up with her wet little hole and pushing inside so hard and so suddenly that the air seems to leave her lungs. It's a smooth slide for him thanks to his decision to let her come first, and he wastes no time to take advantage of her willing, pliant body and set himself a fast, hard rhythm, thrusting deep enough to slap his hips hard against hers with every push, the metal buckle of the belt hanging open off his hips hitting her ass hard enough with every stroke to leave a nice bruise. It's his turn to use her body to get off, and his intent isn't lost on her. She moans louder when he hooks his hand under her knee that's hanging off of the couch and pushes it up to get it out of the way only to shove his cock deeper into her. "Such a flexible toy I have," he teases sarcastically, pushing her knee up past the point of comfort.

He feels her getting wetter with the twinge of pain at being stretched too far, but he doesn't see her wince as he makes it a point to look down at his cock sliding in and out of her instead of at her face, further objectifying her, treating her body like a masturbatory tool and giving her the feeling she craves of being fucked like a thing instead of a person. Suddenly, his buttocks are tightening almost to the point of cramping as his hips thrust sharply forward, and his orgasm takes him completely by surprise. He grunts and curses, because, while he knew it wouldn't be long, he thought he had a little more time than that, but he's able to pull out just in time to watch his cum shoot in long, hot, urgent but halting spurts over her stomach. A few streaks fire far enough to paint her chest as his cock bobs and twitches, erratically out of sync with his steady but ragged breaths.

He finally looks to her face again and catches her looking as content as he feels. He knows that, in less than a minute, she's going to complain about cum drying on her skin and demand a towel, but until reality sets in she's happy to bear the marks of his use, and he takes advantage of her afterglow. Taking his slowly softening cock in his hand, he wipes a bead of cum about to drip off the tip onto the smooth skin of her thigh and humiliates her further. "You make a good cum rag."

If he'd been unsure about pushing what might be a boundary they haven't found yet, he is assured by how her cheeks light up and her eyelids lower. She makes a noise between an embarrassed whine and a gratified sigh before melting, all of the tension leaving her muscles and leaving her boneless on the white couch, looking like a doll so thoroughly used as to become easily pliable.

Mission accomplished, Levi thinks. He slaps her clean thigh before she can regain some lucidity and complain about the sticky feeling on her skin and asks, "Do you want a shower or just a washcloth?"

"What do you want me to do?"

He would tell her that he couldn't possibly give fewer fucks about what happens with his cum once it's outside of him, but she knows that. She's asking him as his possession, as his toy, what would he prefer for her to do, because she doesn't want to leave the scene yet.

He has an idea, inspired by this growing urge to see how filthy he can make her get. As he tucks himself back into his pants, he tells her, "Use your fingers."

She props herself up on her elbows and looks at him curiously. He turns to her once he gets his belt buckled again and says, "You heard me."

Her nose wrinkles with badly hidden disgust, but she sits up and trails her forefinger through a streak of cum slowly dripping down over her nipple. Without hesitation the finger disappears behind her pale pink lips, and she sucks it clean, though the face she makes almost makes him laugh. When she sees the wrinkles at the corners of his eyes that mean he's holding back a smile, she pops her finger out of her mouth and pouts.

"So sucking it out of my dick is okay, but sucking it off your finger isn't," he says to make sure he's clear about this new revelation on her attitudes about cum.

"It's not that," she whines. Her eyelashes cover her eyes as she looks downward like she's embarrassed and she mutters, "It's cold."

Levi closes his eyes and pinches the bridge of his nose. Note to self: slave only likes warm cum.

"Shut up," she whines, though he hasn't said anything. "It's just different. It's gross when it's all cold."

"I'll take your word for it," he says, because it's not like he's going to try it to find out. "Go take a shower."

She pops up off the couch, and he watches her hips sway as she heads for the bathroom with a very pleased bounce in her step, somehow quickly and flawlessly returning to that oh-so-innocent look that he loves to wreck. When she disappears, he gets up and looks around the room, letting out an irritated sigh, as if by some logic he shouldn't be the one to have to clean up this mess.

Moments later his attempt at cleaning up is interrupted. When Hange barges in without knocking, she doesn't ask why it looks like a bear got loose in his living room, but she looks around as if searching for something. Levi tells her to fuck off and knock next time, but she ignores him. Her eyes land on the coffee table and she says, "Oh, good, you got it."

It takes him a minute to realize she's talking about the tea leaves, but when he figures it out, he's immediately suspicious. "Where did you get tea and why is the kitchen suddenly out?"

"I've had it for a couple months," she replies casually. "I thought it would come in handy if I needed something from you."

Levi nods. It makes sense, because she knows about his weakness for tea. Most of the members of the Survey Corps—those who have been around a long time, anyway, like him and Hange—have a fondness for making deals on petty graft. It might have something to do with Erwin's influence and the way he is always so determined to acquire funding and support by any means necessary, moral or not.

"You have anything to do with the tea shortage?" he asks frankly, because if she wanted to bribe him, she would also need to make sure he couldn't get tea anywhere else. She denies any involvement, and he believes her. She's too crazy to lie. So he asks, "What did you want in exchange?"

"Nothing!" Hange waves her palms in front of her. "Just knew you would be cranky without it and didn't want a repeat of last time."

There are very few left alive who remember the last time Levi ran out of tea.

"So you're feeling okay?" she checks one last time.

He still doesn't trust her quite fully, but he can't put a finger on exactly why. "Yeah… Thanks…"

This is where she would be leaving, because, although they consider themselves close, they don't socialize a lot. It's just the way they are. Hange freezes, and her eyes widen slightly behind her 's a small squeak, and he turns and catches Erna standing in the door frame behind him. She'd come in fresh from the shower, eyes closed while drying her hair with a towel, oblivious to Hange's presence and completely bare. Levi sees her just in time to watch her open her eyes, startle, and whip the towel she was drying her hair with around her torso while letting out a high-pitched yelp.

"Sorry!" she blurts out as she backs away to the bedroom again.

"It's okay, I'm leaving," Hange says with a good natured smile. She can't help adding, "Have fun."

Levi waits until she closes the door behind her to direct his voice toward the bedroom and say, "I love when you do that."

"Do what?" Erna calls back, obviously very annoyed. "Fucking embarrass myself like an idiot?"

Levi walks into the bedroom and grabs the clean shirt she was about to pull on out of her hands. "That too, but no. I like it more when you humiliate yourself in front of other people."

Her cheeks turn a light pink, and she groans to herself. She crosses her arms over her chest and mutters, "I hate it."

Levi puts the clothes Erna pulled out back into the dresser. After scaring the shit out of every recruit he ran into this morning, he thinks it would be best to stay in the rest of the day, and if she's going to be there with him, he'd rather not have her dressed. While she leans against the bed and pouts, he goes and picks her collar up off the bedside table that she leaves it on when she's showering or sleeping. Sometimes, he wishes he hadn't cut the little silver bell off of the front of it, because he's very serious about how much he likes seeing her humiliated in public, and the bell was good for that before she learned how to psychologically torture him with it.

He tilts her chin up and puts her collar on, fastening the buckle at the back of her neck and then giving it a slight tug while looking into her eyes and making that pink flush spread further down from her cheeks to her neck and chest. "I like it," he tells her sternly, which makes her pout more, though he can see her pupils start to dilate as he pulls her roughly by her collar to stop leaning against the bed and stand up straight. He runs his thumb over the leather and contemplates it. "Sometimes I think about getting a leash and leading you all around this castle."

She shivers under his fingers and tilts her chin down again, whining quietly, "Don't."

He knows public humiliation is a hard limit. She's made that very clear, just like he's made clear that hurting her out of real anger is one of his hard limits. Normally he's very respectful and careful of her limits and even things she only mildly dislikes, but she felt it was okay to talk about her kink for his hard limit earlier, so he can justify talking about this now even if it makes her uncomfortable.

The way it makes her look uncomfortable is one of the biggest draws. It's kind of the whole point. He loves that blush gently burning her skin as her heart rate picks up, and how dark and inky her eyelashes look when her eyes are downcast and avoiding direct eye contact because she's ashamed and embarrassed.

He doesn't have a leash, but having gone without so much in the Underground made him a good improviser. The closest thing at hand to substitute is his belt, which he takes off slowly to watch goosebumps rise all over her soft, pale skin. Her chin is still tilted down as she watches his hands eagerly and she doesn't see the wicked smirk that is just slightly there on his lips when she lets out a little moan. He knows she thinks he's going to bend her over the bed and whip her with the strip of brown leather. It makes it even better when he slips the end of it through her collar instead and cinches it tight. Her eyes fly up to look at him, wide and betrayed. Her eyebrows knit together slightly with a troubled expression painting her face a brighter red, and a pitiful whine vibrates behind her pouting lips.

"What?" he teases. "You're beautiful." He brings his palm to the back of her neck and pulls her closer while tugging slightly on her leash. "And such a good pet."

She looks away and hums out a very conflicted sound, her whole body vibrating with the mortification at what he's proposing, but delighted with the praise.

"I could make you follow me on your hands and knees, take you to meetings where you'd curl up quietly at my feet, show everyone how completely I own you…"

She takes his dark words very seriously and dread fills her eyes. She blinks and tears barely start to sparkle at the edges of her lids. He caresses her cheek with the back of his hand affectionately to ground her.

"You would if I really ordered you to, wouldn't you?" he says, his voice dark and low, but his tone teasing. "That's why you're so scared."

Her lower lip trembles just slightly. She begs quietly, "Please don't make me."

He would love to, if not for the fact that it would probably break her. The knowledge that he could make her do something so deeply abhorrent to her if he wanted to is enough to make his cock hard again. As he looks down at her body appreciatively and thinks about his fantasy to put her on display as his possession, he spots a bead of water pooled in her collarbone that she missed and he licks it away, then quickly latches on with his teeth, sucking and biting at the spot while she squirms and yelps. He doesn't stop until he's given her a bruise dark enough to stand out against the red flush over her skin.

He then steps back again and checks. "High enough," he confirms, meaning at least the upper edge of the bruise will show above the collar of her shirt when she puts one on. He slides the belt through and out of her leather collar, making relief wash over her face as he says, "Good for now."

Her breathing slowly levels out as she calms down. He smirks at how worked up she got, and she slaps his bicep with the back of her hand, calling him a dick and then unconsciously running her finger under her collar as if it suddenly got too tight.

"How did that make you feel?"

"Sinking… a little dizzy."

"That's how I feel when you want me to lose my temper and take it out on you." He puts his belt back on and turns to go back to cleaning up the living room. "So let's not push at limits."

Erna pouts for a second and thinks about it. She can see the parallel and empathize, but, being a brat, she still calls after him, "Does that mean it isn't up for negotiation?"

It apparently doesn't warrant a response, as she gets none back from him. She tugs lightly at her collar again and decides to take it off before getting dressed. There is a small psychological trauma attached to the accessory now, and it will probably take some time before she can wear it without thinking of Levi's threat to parade her around on a leash.

When she goes to join him in the living room, which she delays until she expects he'll be about finished cleaning up because she doesn't want him to ask her to help, he immediately points out a particular pile of papers on the floor near the coffee table and asks, "Why are there a bunch of shitty recruits' files littering my floor?"

Erna groans loudly, then offers a very unsatisfactory answer, "I dropped them."

As she's bending over and gathering them up, she explains, "Erwin promoted me. These are my shitty recruits now."

"Congratulations," Levi says in an expressionless deadpan, so she doesn't know if he's being sincere or sarcastic.

"I don't wanna be in change of people," she whines.

"Why not?" Levi asks, righting a small end table he'd knocked over earlier. "It's easy."

Erna chews her lip. She can't say exactly why not. It's just a visceral feeling. When she thinks about being in a position of authority, it makes her feel sick and dizzy. If she dwells on it too long, her vision starts to go grey around the edges, like she's about to pass out, and her mind screams that she can't do it. She feels helpless and alone. She drops the stack of files on the table in a neat pile so that Levi won't snap at her. She walks past him on her way back to the bedroom she just left, dreamily pronouncing her intention to take a nap, though she hopes it will be longer than a nap—more like a coma until this fucking nightmare is over.

He grabs her wrist, always finding it easily even when he isn't facing her, and stops her. "What's wrong with you?"

"What? I can't take a nap?"

"No. You can't. I don't think you ever have with the exception of the times I've fucked you to exhaustion." He holds her wrist in a tight grip and looks her over. "Are you okay?"

His voice is shaded with concern, the kind she recognizes as an expression of vague guilt that she hears underneath his monotone when he's checking that he hasn't pushed her too far in their play. Her shoulders sag, because, of all the things, she's especially too tired for anyone's emotional care. She can barely handle her own. "It's nothing you did," she tries to sound as assuring as possible as she gently tugs her wrist away from him. He doesn't let go. He waits silently for more, his eyes seeming to drill under her skin for an explanation of what it is if not him. "I just don't want to deal with…" she thinks about what exactly it is she's trying to get away from in sleep, "...anything right now."

His lips twist slightly with a skeptical, disapproving look. "Avoiding it won't improve the situation."

His advice is lost on her, because she believes the whole situation is bad enough that literally nothing would improve it anyway. "I'm emotionally exhausted," she pleads. "I'll avoid for now and face reality later."

He lets her go with a slight nod, letting her have it her way, only he follows her like a shadow into the bedroom and grips the hem of her shirt, pulling it up and off when she lifts her arms for him. She thinks he's being helpful. Then, his fingers trail over her ribs and down to her hip bones, and his breath on the back of her neck makes her think this might be more than just helping her crawl into bed, so she whines and murmurs, "Levi, I'm tired."

He keeps going, his thumbs hooking into the waist of her soft grey leggings and pushing them down while she squirms uneasily. His teeth scrape at the back of her neck, pain pushing wakefulness into her, before he gently pushes her forward to lie on her front on the mattress. "Then relax," he says after a breath, adding, "I don't need you to be awake."

She thinks he's bluffing, so she nuzzles into the soft sheets and closes her eyes, refusing to move in any way to help make it easier for him while he pulls her leggings all the way off. When he slides his rough calloused palms up her thighs, she wriggles away and pulls the covers over herself with a hum, lying on her side facing away from him and burying her face into her pillow.

He isn't deterred and simply slides in behind her to rub soothing circles into her lower back with his thumbs, licking and sucking hungrily at the skin of her neck just behind her ear.

Erna is annoyed at her automatic reaction to arch her back and push her hips toward his to nudge herself against the bulge in his pants even while she feels exhausted and cranky and a little overwhelmed and depressed. She clucks her tongue and drones tiredly, "What's gotten into you?" as she kicks weakly at his legs and makes a half-hearted swing with her arm in a clumsy attempt to push him away, which only makes him wrap one of his legs around her thighs to hold her still and grab her arm that isn't pinned between her side and the bed in a tight grip.

"Don't know," he concedes that even for him, this much sex drive is abnormal, but the low husk in his voice makes it sound like he doesn't particularly care either way. He breathes in the smell of her clean, damp hair before scraping her with his teeth again and asking, "Do you want me to stop?"

If he'd asked earlier, her answer would have been a definite yes, but his mouth and the possessive hold he has her in are turning that into a blurry maybe. "I don't mind," she says, her voice coming out thinly and more feeble as he keeps groping at her with greedy fingers, kneading at her thighs and pushing one leg up to gently run a single finger over the dampening lips of her cunt. She shudders, but stubbornly nuzzles all the more into her pillow. "I just don't want to feel obligated to move."

There's a hidden laugh in his chest at that. She can feel it against her back. The hand holding her arm in place squeezes slightly harder, and he whispers against her ear, "You don't need to move to be a fucktoy."

He gently worries her earlobe in his teeth and makes her sigh. She lets her muscles relax and stops thinking about moving, though if her hips want to push back against him and seek friction as much as they can while still pinned by Levi's powerful thighs, that's fine with her, but she closes her eyes and lets herself get lost somewhere between sleep and wakefulness with one last murmured warning, "Just don't come on me. I just showered."

"I'll take care of it," he assures hurriedly, reaching down to unbutton and pull his pants down enough to free his cock and start teasing her with it. He taps the head against her lips and grins into the back of her neck before biting down, pressing his teeth into her vertebrae and making her let out a sleepy moan into the pillow.

She whines with plaintive irritation when he tries to press forward and into her, because it's too soon, and it burns a little. She isn't wet enough. He should know better, she thinks. He cups a hand around her throat and advises with a dark edge to his voice, "Don't whine," before biting her neck again, this time on a fresh bruise he sucked into her skin while she was still getting comfortable and planning to just take a nap.

The pain from his teeth and the threat in his voice make her relax, and it substitutes for foreplay as her cunt responds with more lubrication and her back arches, contemptibly betraying her and presenting herself to him in a better position for him to fuck her deep and hard. He places a steadying hand on her hip, digging his fingers into her flesh while tugging her neck and shoulders closer to him with the hand wrapped around her throat. He pulls back with his hips and pushes forward gently, a little deeper and a little deeper, drawing out only desperate, hungry moans from her, before finally snapping his hips forward and burying his cock inside her all the way to the base with a grunt. He stills himself as she breathes hard and fast. It takes her a moment to get used to the pressure. He doesn't move until she does, finally acclimated and ready for more, desperately asking for it with weak moans and small, tired movements of her hips.

Erna keeps making unconscious, half-asleep noises that are mostly annoyed, desperate whines at being too tired to actively take what she wants, which in her fuzzy mind only amounts to closer, deeper. She makes half-hearted attempts at moving her hips against his as best she can in her pinned position and trying to arch and bare her neck for more abuse from his teeth.

Having his pet in a position of utter surrender, weakened and whining for more, makes Levi's chest and stomach clench. He growls as he fucks into her hard, sometimes faltering in his rhythm as he tries to push into her deeper and jolt her whole body harder while she whines and makes little, ineffectual movements with her hips. He bites the nape of her neck, and then buries his face in her hair to breathe in the smell of the sweet rose and cinnamon scented shampoo she uses as he nears the edge, pinning her thighs still by tightening his legs around her, trapping her and breathing hot along her neck. "Do you want me to make you come?" he asks wickedly, drawing back and thrusting into her particularly hard. "Do you even think you could when you're this tired?" The answer he gets is a breathy whine and gasp as he thrusts brutally into her. "Or…" he asks without faltering in his rhythm, "do you want me to just use you?"

She reacts more strongly to that, moaning brokenly for him. He takes that as an answer and runs with it, grunting, "I'm so close… couldn't care less whether you come or not…" Then, as he rushes towards his climax, he whispers more degradation into her ear, "Going to use your body whenever I need to get off. You're nothing to me but a convenient fuck toy. That's why I don't mind fucking you half asleep."

Before he's even finished his last sentence, he feels her twitching and clenching around his cock. He keeps fucking her through the aftershocks of her orgasm until she starts to whine again, and he can feel her body melt into the bed. He quickly pulls out and gets her on her back, straddling her chest and prying open her slack lips with his fingers. She moans a complaint at the intrusion and tries to turn away, but he's already pushing the head of his cock past her lips and fisting her hair in his hand, pulling her head up so that he can fuck into her mouth.

"If you don't want to need another shower, be good and swallow," he growls before pumping himself into her mouth. His whole body shudders, and he throws his head back, closing his eyes and hissing, "Fuck." His hips stutter and still, and he looks back down to watch her cheeks hollow as she sucks down his cum like a good pet. He blinks, entranced by the image, until she finishes swallowing and presses her tongue against the over sensitive head of his cock to give it a long, teasing lick and make him hiss and flinch in pain like the tip of his cock just got burnt. She hums happily when he pulls out of her mouth, and she easily goes back to burying her face in her pillow, murmuring unintelligibly but contentedly as she closes her eyes.

A warmth grows in his chest looking at her as he leaves the bed to rid himself of his clothes. She looks peaceful, but he knows that she's anything but—there are going to be troubled, anxious nightmares in her sleep. They'll persist when she's awake, but she'll push them down and refuse to give them any real thought.

Levi kneels on the bed and moves her hair away from her face. She murmurs peacefully but doesn't move, and he tells her, "You're such a contradiction." He gets under the covers with her. "You kill titans alone from the ground without hesitation, but you're so terrified of telling some brats what to do that you have to sleep to avoid thinking about it…"

Her lips turn down in the slightest hint of a frown. He smooths the furrow out of her brow with his thumb and teases, "And you come faster from just my voice when I'm telling you that I don't care if it feels good for you."

"s'hot," she mutters.

"But you know I do care," he says quietly, hoping she's already asleep so that he can get away with saying it without his vulnerability being heard.

She moves closer to him, sliding her hands over his skin and pulling him in so that she can nuzzle her face into the muscles of his chest. "Wouldn't let you fuck me if you didn't."

He smirks and curls an arm around her waist. "Go to sleep."

There was a time when it didn't even occur to him to worry about being a monster, when being rough and having a burning urge to wreck and hold power over others was not in defiance of the society around him and there was no value to being gentle. He learned early that he likes it rough and brutal, and it wasn't a problem in his mind. It seemed natural, given his environment. Only after finally seeing the sun and being transplanted and adjusting his feelings toward humanity and morality did the anxiety about what his proclivities meant about him start to make sleep difficult. He avoided sex for months, possibly years, thinking that he was an aberration for what got him off…the sharp slap of a cheek, breathless gasp as air is cut off, the wide-eyed look of panic, gut-wrenching sobs for mercy, and salty, sparkling tears.

The lucky irony that there are people like Erna who enjoy the same things but from the other side still amazes him. It's harder to think of himself as a monster when he has someone who gets off on his sadism so enthusiastically.

Still, he can't shake the anxiety that makes him be careful, because his need for cruelty runs deeper than he shows, and there are many ways in which he would go too far if not for caring enough about the person he's fucking to keep himself in check. As he rubs Erna's back and feels her breathing peacefully, her body molded tight against him, he wonders if she would ever suspect how completely he would ruin her if he didn't hold back. He doubts she would have the twisted imagination needed to guess how he could rape all the innocence out of her until her eyes are only ever filled with creeping chaos, until she could only look at him with a depraved, madly desperate devotion. Instead of happily and willingly, he would have her submit out of a broken and fearful need. If not for the pull of the morality he's developed, for fewer years under the open sky than he spent cultivating his vicious cruelty in the underground, he would be more of a monster. Instead of a partner, the woman sleeping peacefully against him would have an abuser to break her beyond hope.

That's why it offends him when she thinks she wants him to get angry with her. It's a hard limit, because it's already an effort to keep his savagery in check. She doesn't know how lucky she is that he knows and enforces his limits as well as he does.


	31. Misconduct

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Warning: emotional and psychological abuse, gaslighting, sad stuff.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

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Erna has very rarely been actually scared. Watching your family murdered in front of you makes most other horrific things pale in comparison. She has nearly starved to death, trudged through sixteen mile long training runs in full gear under a hot, glaring sun, and escaped a handful of titans’ mouths, but none of that scared the shit out of her the way eight Survey Corps recruits staring at her and waiting for her to say something does. 

She can't stand to actually look any of them in the face, so she looks behind the line of them at the clear blue sky, shining bright with the dawn. 

She is completely unprepared for this. 

“Tch,” she clucks her tongue quietly at herself. She can blame Levi, though it takes two people to spend a whole day and night fucking every few hours. It's not like she wasn't encouraging him to get the riding crop from the desk and skip dinner so that she could continue to avoid doing any kind of preparation for the next day. It's not like she couldn't have gotten up a little early this morning and at least read those files to learn these kids’ names instead of staying in bed until the last second and throwing on her uniform just before brushing her teeth and running out the door. 

The morning sex had seemed worth it at the time. 

She takes a deep breath and asks as authoritatively as she can for the recruits names, which they offer nervously. Her thirty seconds of silence threw them off already. They wouldn't be nervous if they knew what was behind her stern face - that she was thinking about how to keep breathing so that she wouldn't faint from fear. As the last in line tells her his name, she realizes that she isn't going to remember any of them. She forgets the first kid’s name as soon as the last in line says theirs, and then she promptly forgets that one too. They’ll all have to go by ‘hey, you’ for a while. 

“Okay,” she says tiredly, resisting the urge to rub the tension from her temples. “You can call me a Erna. I don't like honorifics.” If she can get them to not call her their team leader maybe it will make it less real. 

She's tempted to ask any of them what to do next, because fuck if she knows. She's apparently supposed to behave with some authority now, though, so asking them for advice isn't an option. Not that they look like they would be helpful. Her first impression is that all eight of them have the same vacant, useless look, and that fills her with dread, because now it's her job to make sure they survive if they're ever on an expedition or reconnaissance or supply run or any of several other life threatening situations Erwin could throw them into. 

“Fuck,” she says quietly to herself, carding her hand into her straight bangs and pushing them away from her forehead. Without hiding her exasperation at her situation, she asks the group, “What do you already know how to do?”

They side eye each other nervously at the odd question. 

“Have you had any training at all?” she asks impatiently, though she's starting to worry whether this is something she would already know had she done her homework. 

“A little…” one short, strawberry blonde girl answers. She has the distinction of having the only name Erna can remember because she's had more than one run-in with her. Callie.

“Yeah,” Erna responds shortly, “I remember basic training too. I mean aside from how to tie your shoes and get your harness on.”

She's treated to blank staring. Her fingers pinch the bridge of her nose. “Anyone been on an expedition?”

Callie raises her hand. Erna gives her a sharp look. “On a horse, not in a fucking supply wagon.” Callie sheepishly lowers her hand. 

“Fucking…” Erna starts to mutter until she's aware of someone coming up behind her and is distracted. Her recruits stand up straighter and salute as Levi walks up beside her. 

He nods curtly at them and asks her quietly, “How’s it going?”

“I fucking hate this. Take them from me.”

“I have my own brats, thanks.”

They both keep their voices low enough to not be heard, so Erna is sure it looks like she's discussing something professional or important when she says, “Why did you let me literally fuck around until the very last second? I'm not even a little prepared for this.”

Unfairly, Levi tilts his chin down just slightly making his face closer to hers and lowers his voice to its deeper, darker tone when he tells her, “Because I’m only human. You expect me to tell you ‘no’ when you’re begging for my dick every hour like a bitch in heat?”

Erna turns to make it look like she’s meeting his eyes, even though she can’t stand to, she just needs to turn her head so that hopefully her team won’t see her blushing. She hisses, “Could you not right now?”

Levi smirks very slightly, and Erna’s stomach sinks. “I think you mean, ‘Could you not right now, Sir’.” Erna feels her face heat up and turns away from him and her team, as if she's distracted by something, but she can still feel his eyes rake over her. It sounds almost sinister when he adds, “I forgot how good you look in uniform.”

“Don’t…” she whispers toward the ground, on the verge of tears with how hard this is. Any other time she would simply melt for him and let him hypnotize her with that dark, vaguely menacing voice. Being forced to listen to it and remain composed is torture, and the fear that these recruits who are supposed to see her as an authority might see her turned on and blushing is humiliating beyond words. 

Levi shrugs and simply says, “Okay,” and moves to walk away. Erna feels relieved and thinks she’ll just need a few seconds for her blush to fade, and then she can face her recruits again. Her thought gets cut short as Levi walks behind her and casually spanks her, just once, but very hard. Hard enough to make a loud slapping noise and have her involuntarily jumping onto her toes as her jaw drops. She’s shocked. She has to turn and look at him to make sure that just happened, but Levi is already walking away. She stares after him dumbfounded until she hears one of the kids on her team stifle a snicker. It pulls her out of her state of disbelief, and she realizes that, of course, they just saw that. She is livid. She turns back to them with murder in her eyes, and, blushing face or not, her glare scares them enough to make the few that didn’t have as much control over their laughter cover their mouths so that none of it will escape. 

She points at them and gives them the grave warning, “Don’t fucking move,” before she stalks off toward Levi, quickly catching up with him, though her moments of utter shock let him get about twenty feet away already. She grabs his shoulder, digging her fingers hard into his muscle and turning him suddenly, almost spinning him on his heel. He gives her a smug look, the kind that she would usually like in a different context, but, instead, it fuels her rage. She releases his shoulder and pokes her index finger into the center of his chest repeatedly as she rants at him, “What the fuck do you think you’re doing? Those brats are supposed to fucking respect me. We’re not alone, this is work, and you’re going to treat me like you have a fucking ounce of professionalism somewhere underneath all… all… your… childish…” she searches for words as her anger grows so that she can barely think. 

Levi crosses his arms and gives her an amused look. “You’re right,” he concedes, though he doesn’t sound apologetic in the least.

“I know!” she says, completely exasperated with his behavior. 

“Keep making it look like you’re angry,” he deadpans in that bored drawl of his. 

“I am fucking angry!” she can’t help gesturing with her hands now. 

“Good,” he says, as if he’s coaching her through this, which only makes her more livid. “Now slap me.”

She cocks her head, not sure she heard him right. “What the fuck?”

“You’re right,” he says, “I was out of line. I shouldn’t have done that in front of your recruits.”

She sees his eyes shift slightly to the left, off to where the brats are still standing, and she gets what he’s trying to do. With no warning, she winds up and slaps him across the face as hard as she can with the full force of all her anger. She has to steel herself as he absorbs it, and her adrenaline rises so that she sees everything in slower motions as she watches him step back slightly, and his face turns to the side. She has to remind herself that he isn’t going to retaliate so that she can stifle the urge to automatically flinch and cower and ruin all the face she just saved in front of her team. 

“Shit,” Levi says in restrained awe as he wipes a tiny trickle of blood from the corner of his mouth with the back of his hand. “Good one.” He pulls a handkerchief out of the pocket of his jacket to clean the blood off of his hand as he turns to walk away and says, “You’re welcome.”

Erna mumbles under her breath, “Asshole…” and glares at his back for acting like she should be grateful he let her do that. If he hadn’t been an ass it wouldn’t have been necessary in the first place. 

She crosses her arms and makes a huffing noise, watches him keep walking, and waits for her chest to stop heaving with anger and adrenaline before walking back to her recruits who are not giggling anymore, but are standing very straight, tense and wary of what she'll do to them if she's willing to slap Captain Levi, Humanity’s Strongest...

“Listen, fuckers,” she starts off, still very much outraged and not above defensively taking it out on them. “I don't know what you've heard already, but I will set the record very straight so that you don't have to wonder.” She gestures over her shoulder with her thumb in Levi’s direction. “That man,” she begins very frankly, “fucks me up the walls every night and, while being the most competent and deadly soldier in any branch of the military, is also, occasionally, enough of an immature fuckstick to smack my ass in public.” She watches the wide eyes grow and jaws drop. Ten minutes ago that would have bothered her. Now, she’s too keyed up to give a fuck. “And I won’t tolerate any disrespect from him, so you can be real fucking sure that any nonsense out of you assholes is going to earn much worse than a slap across the face.” 

A few recruits visibly gulp. Others shift their weight nervously.

“If you do not follow my instructions to the fucking letter, I will absolutely wreck you,” she warns, no longer shouting, but her voice falling like freezing rain. 

For years after this, she’s going to have to wonder if Levi’s actions were purely an immature impulse, or if spanking her in front of a line of recruits was a calculated and brilliant way to make her get over her nerves and give her a shot of anger and adrenaline that would help her find her voice as a leader. 

She leans toward immature impulse. 

Erna trains her recruits for six hours, mostly assessing what they already know and learning their names. The names turn out to be the hardest part. Assessing abilities is easy, especially when there isn’t much ability there to begin with. Only one of them has any potential with the maneuver gear. The rest she figures she’s going to need to teach to ride really, really fast. If they can’t be good at fighting, they can at least be good at running away. 

The entire time, she’s preoccupied with their inevitable deaths. Even when training is over. Their ghosts already haunt her. She feels like she should talk to someone about it, because she’s sure that waking nightmares about the gory demise of an entire team aren't normal, but she doesn’t think any of the veteran squad leaders will really understand. The only person she can think of who is in a similar position to her is Jean, but he is a sarcastic, unsympathetic asshole. 

She could, of course, talk to Levi. She probably should. Only, she already talked to him about how she felt about this when it was just a threat and not a reality, and she didn’t like his advice. Not that she thought he was wrong. His advice was just too hard and real and truthful, and she needs more comfort than real and truthful advice. 

After releasing her team, she goes to see what she can get from the kitchen. She’d skipped breakfast because she felt sick, and now she’s starving. 

Even though she’s scared and she doubts herself and she wishes she could shove Erwin’s promotion up his ass, there’s something about wearing her boots again. They put a bounce in her step and make her walk a little taller. It feels good to have a reason to wear her uniform and to get back to a schedule. Keeping time won't be difficult anymore. She’s a part of the hustle and bustle of daily activities again and won't have to check clocks to know when mealtimes and such are. It's comforting to move with the current. 

She loses herself with the tide of others following a set routine, until Levi intersects with her path, stony silver eyes undetected until he's right there, grabbing her wrist and catching her up, pulling her in the opposite direction. She spins and stumbles to keep up as he tells her, “Come on,” perfunctorily, like they already agreed on something she isn't aware of. 

Naturally, she asks him, “What the fuck?” and tries to dig her heels into the stone. She tugs at his grip, trying to reclaim her own wrist, but he doesn't relinquish it like he normally would. He doesn't slow down, either, dragging her with him to the staircase near the castle’s entrance, against the tide of soldiers heading to lunch. Having an audience makes Erna self conscious about resisting. She doesn't want to make a scene and especially doesn't want to look weak if she can't get Levi to let go of her, so she quickens her pace to keep up with him and walk beside him instead of letting herself be dragged. Even with her cooperation, he keeps his grip crushingly tight. She can feel the bones in her wrist grinding against each other. 

When they reach the top of the stairs together, she looks up and down the corridor, and, when she sees that no one is in earshot, she hisses, “I’m starving. Let me go to lunch.” She stops and tries to wrench her wrist out of his hand, but he keeps walking and easily pulls her along without even slowing down, and as she almost stumbles again, a wave of anxiety hits her. 

He's pulled her along by her wrist before, but not like this. Never when she didn't want to go with him. Never so single-minded about it that he would keep going even if she was trying to stop. She keeps tugging at him, watching his back as he walks ahead of her, and tripping over herself to not fall to her knees every time she offers resistance to his steady, stubborn pace. 

“Levi?” she says to the wings of freedom stitched on his back, the sound of it strange to her. When people live together, they lose the habit of using each other's names. Her heart starts to pound when he makes no signal that he's listening, and she says again, more shrilly, almost shouting, wondering if she should be shouting, “Levi!”

He pauses then, glancing over his shoulder at her and merely shaking her wrist as if it were a leash and telling her without a hint of emotion, “Come on.” 

“What are you doing?” she demands shakily as he takes her to their apartment. 

“You're in trouble,” he says simply, as if she should have known. 

Erna’s anxiety takes a back seat to sudden indignation as he finally lets her go, pushes her through the door, and closes it behind them. She turns on him and shouts, “Me? What about you? Where do you get off embarrassing me like that? I shouldn't be the one who’s in trouble.”

He rolls his eyes at her as if what he did that morning isn't a big deal. He gives her a dismissive, “Tch,” before stepping closer. She crosses her arms and glares defiantly, taking a backwards step away from him. His face changes suddenly, the bored, blank, half-lidded expression disintegrating and contorting with spite and malice. She keeps moving back hesitantly and unconsciously, feeling cornered, and he moves toward her much faster, grabbing her up by the leather chest strap of her harness and yanking her to him just as the backs of her calves hit the coffee table. 

Her fingers claw and dig at the flesh of the hand restraining her, and she kicks back at the piece of furniture hemming her in, trying to get it out of the way and give herself room to retreat. 

Levi renders her struggling useless by lifting her up off her feet a little, twisting her harness as much as it will give in his fist. His tone is gloating, laced with amusement at her distress, as if she's being naive and childishly overreacting. “We can talk about your issues with how I display my ownership over you later. Right now, we're going to address your diminished sense of discipline.”

“The fuck are you talking about?” She winces, the tight tug of her harness bruising her at its pressure points. 

He trades his grip on her harness to take a hand and twist it behind her back, spinning her and immobilizing her right arm by bringing it up to her shoulder blades. He walks her ahead of him and ignores her shocked, outraged cries as he ticks off her offenses calmly. “Breaches of military protocol, failing to salute a superior officer, speaking informally to your Captain...” 

He lets go of her hand and pushes her into the room, and immediately she turns on him, “You can't be fucking serious!”

He smirks at her, and Erna suddenly wonders if this is in reaction to her mentioning yesterday that she gets off on him being angry at her, because if not, his actions are highly irrational. She hasn't addressed him by his title in months, and she can barely remember the last time she saluted anyone except maybe Erwin and even then only ironically. 

“Did you think you were special? Rules don't apply to you?” 

“I thought that maybe some ‘protocol’ went out the fucking window when you smacked my ass during training,” she sneers and sarcastically adds, “Sir.”

He steps further into the room to stand only a couple feet away from her, looking her up and down. “Correct your posture, soldier. At attention.”

Erna’s eyes narrow and lock on his defiantly, even as she straightens her shoulders and obeys his orders, telling herself it's only out of curiosity, because this is all a little strange. She believes she's just playing along, but still there's something in her that swoons and is too easily seduced by his stern voice and the authority in his body language as he pulls rank on her. A part of her is still very indignant about her preferences being ignored, but her submissive, masochistic side quickly overwhelms those annoyed feelings, and her righteous indignation is clouded over with a servile obeisance that comes to the forefront whenever Levi does something to make her breathing slow and her pupils dilate, like backing her into a corner, leering at her threateningly, his quietly burning gaze lighting a fire that reddens her skin the way it is now. She feels her stomach drop with self loathing at how conflicted she feels about submitting to him when she knows she should be indignant and angry and resistant, and in a sick way, the shame she feels over it makes her cunt wetter. She brings her fist over her heart for good measure and says, “Hai, Captain Levi,” her voice slow, syrupy, and low.

He hums deeply in the back of of his throat, a satisfied exhale of breath making a gruff sound through his nose as he advances in on her, “That's better,” he says in a low rasp. Then, he turns her around to face the bed and pushes her shoulders forward until she reaches for the mattress. “But you still need to be disciplined for forgetting your place earlier.”

Erna sighs deeply and playfully wiggles her hips as he starts undoing buckles to get her harness out of the way, and she decides to see how much role-playing he's willing to do if he's going to pretend to actually give a shit about military discipline. She goes stiff just as he's smoothing a hand up her back, caressing her and pushing her shoulders down slightly further, and in a sly, coquettishly teasing way, she asks as if she's shocked and nervous, “Sir?… What are you going to do to me?”

She feels the hand on her back smooth back down her spine slowly, making her shudder. “Pain,” he says as he reaches around her waist and lifts her up to stand again, “is the most effective method of conditioning.” His hand moves from her waist to the strap buckled across her chest, quickly, almost surreptitiously groping at her breast on the way to effortlessly release the buckle.

Erna bites her lip as if she's scared, even though Levi is behind her and won't see her face, it helps her sound more authentic when she lets out a little gasp as he pushes her back down to grip the sheets on the bed and begins to pull at the waist of her pants. “Unh,” she whines anxiously, “Captain Levi, what are you…?” then she gasps again as he pulls her pants and underwear down in two quick tugs and wastes no time roughly digging his fingers into her and kneading a handful of one of her exposed ass cheeks. She cries out and curls her fingers to fist the sheets under her hands. 

“Be quiet,” he hisses, kneading one cheek and then the other, “and take your punishment.” He stops his groping with one hand to run a finger down the curve of her ass, stopping just shy of her sex and then teasing her, sliding the finger back up and over the cheek he'd just been bruising with his harsh grip. “Or do you want to add to your growing list of infractions and question your commanding officer's methods?”

“No, sir.” She makes her voice quiver. She tries to stay tense and not reach her hips back for the spanking she thinks she's going to get. She finds it easier to play at being scared as he keeps making her wait for it. Her anticipation can easily be twisted into what sounds like nervous hesitation. He keeps kneading at her and groping, pulling her cheeks apart, humiliatingly exposing her and squeezing at them, murmuring mostly to himself as if in a trance, “Such a nice ass…”

Erna nuzzles her face into the bed and waits for him to start spanking her and making her moan. She can barely hold back her pleased sighs in anticipation of one of her favorite kinds of punishment until she feels his fingers reach down and brush against the pucker between her cheeks and she yelps in shock. She pushes herself up a little off the bed with her palms splayed against it and looks back at Levi who smirks past the arch of her back at her, his fingers having already retreated. He still keeps one rounded sphere of muscle in a tight grip, while he reaches up and pushes her shoulders back down to the bed again and warns her, “Hold still and relax, unless you want it to hurt even more,” and before she can ask what he's up to, his hand returns to the cleft of her ass and a single finger starts gently teasing her hole.

She whines into the sheets, not sure if she likes the stimulation of all those nerve endings more than she hates burning with humiliation at the act. She gets out a “What are you…?” before her question is cut short by her own scream at the pain of the tip of his finger pushing just barely into her. 

“Fuck! Levi!” she yelps out in pained gasps.

He corrects her calmly, “Captain Levi.” 

“Fucking hurts!”

Again, calm as ever, he says, “That's the point.” He pushes again, incredibly slowly and only a centimeter or so deeper past the tight ring of muscle. He doesn't doubt the sincerity of her howl. Since he isn't using any lube, he's not surprised that it's very painful. 

Erna’s nails drag the sheets down the bed. She hisses and curses at him and sobs brokenly at the painful, strange, and uncomfortable burn, but she doesn't get up, afraid that moving will make it worse.

Levi's eyes cloud over as he watches her writhe and curse, helpless to stop him. He pushes a tiny bit further, though not even up to the first knuckle, and feels his cock pulse and twitch as her hole clenches tightly around his finger, and she groans, sick with pain and indignation, before sobbing into the mattress, her whole body vibratingly tense and muscles taut and straining, but fearful and helpless to move. He keeps his finger still and leans over her to bring his mouth closer to her ear so that she'll hear him over her whimpering when he asks, “Are you going to be good?”

She hums a mangled noise of agreement, broken and ready to do or say anything that will make him relent, and he smiles to himself. 

Erna wipes at her tears with the back of one forearm, and they burn. Everything burns—her face, her forehead, his finger trapped just barely inside a tight, puckered ring of muscle causing more pain than she would have thought possible. Her teeth grind against each other and hurt her jaw. She wants him to stop and was just on the verge of telling him so when he offered her an out. Promising to be good always means moving on or relenting, so she keeps humming her promises to be good, whatever that means.

He feels her relax slightly now that she thinks it's almost over. Still leaning over her, he cruelly pushes his single, dry finger deeper, now sheathing at least the whole tip of it up to his first knuckle. He sneers, thinking he could almost drink up the delicious screams that crack her throat. When the noise lessens, he teases her, “I'm waiting for a proper response, soldier.”

Erna gasps and cries, but manages to say with a tremor in her voice, “Hai, Captain Levi! I'll be good, sir!” Anything to please him, anything to make him stop. 

He drags his finger out of her, but still holds her cheeks apart to watch the ring of muscle tense and tighten protectively before moving a hand back up to hold her shoulders down before she can finish catching her breath. He changes his voice to as dulcet a tone as he can manage while keeping her securely pinned to the bed, soothing her humiliation and outrage with praise, telling her again and again, “You did so good, such a good, well-behaved pet,” as her nerve endings slowly forget the intensity of the pain he just inflicted on her seconds ago. 

With his hand against her shoulder, he waits until he feels the tension tick out of her. Though she's still moaning and sobbing, she's limp when he lets go of her and stands again. He keeps showering her with praise, telling her that she's beautiful, keeping her emotions confused while he reaches for his cock and releases it from the pants it's been straining against. He tells her again, “You have such a perfect ass,” while he digs his fingers into the smooth, round globes of it again, making her flinch and yelp with renewed fear. 

Erna claws at the bed, feeling raw and vulnerable and helpless, confused on top of it all, because she shouldn't feel this way with him. She's never felt really scared like this, and it's making her tongue swollen and heavy, and, even though she's breathing hard and fast, her lungs feel empty. She should probably be fighting him, but, instead, she fights with herself, because he could never be wrong. Rather, it must be something wrong with her, but the word she's never said escapes her lips anyway, and she rasps with a closing throat, “Stop.” Even though it's quiet and simple, that word is the first shot fired in a war in her head. Because how could she? She's supposed to trust him with all of her, and that feeling is, as ever, louder than self preservation. Guilt over asking him to stop rushes in like a wave, drowning the pain and anguish at her core that made her say it in the first place, and under his rough hands she's a conflicted mess, but she says it again and again. “Stop… stop…” while she buries her face in the mattress to let the sheets soak up her tears. 

He soothes her, saying “Don't worry, I won't do it again,” without letting go or turning his intent gaze away from the beautiful curves of her hips and thighs that buck under his hands. 

She only struggles weakly, still too inside herself and disoriented by shock to struggle with conscious effort. It isn't difficult for him to hold her still with one hand gripping the side of her ass while he taps the head of his cock against the other cheek, making the flesh indent and jiggle. He slides it over the smooth skin, letting go of a quiet, low moan at the filthy sight of his precum smearing over her and leaving a wet trail behind. 

After pushing and prodding some more at her round, plush cheek with the almost purple, engorged head of his weeping cock, Levi lets go of it to fill his hand with the muscle that tenses immediately under his violent grip, and he pulls her cheeks apart again, moving his hips to let his cock rest between them. Erna starts to fight weakly, then harder as he keeps pushing and sliding his cock up and down the cleft. He ignores her and stays focused, not even hearing her when she asks him what the fuck he's doing. He pushes forward and his hips hit her thighs, knocking her forward onto the bed before she can try to stand up. He grabs her aggressively, squeezing the luscious, white cheeks of her ass around his cock tight and sliding between them, fucking the maddeningly smooth, curvaceous flesh and watching the head of his cock just peek out the top of her cheeks at the end of every thrust. 

Erna turns around as best she can to look over her shoulder at him, and she cranes her neck to be able to see his face. He looks like he doesn't even notice; his eyes are intent on only one part of her body as he pants and grunts and presses the pads of his fingers into her like he's holding on for dear life. 

Erna grunts angrily as she tries to get up, but he holds her in in place with a tight grip on her ass, and she can only look back at him and let out a mystified, “Levi, what the fuck?” with her brows knit, indignant and exhausted, but at the same time grateful that at least he isn't hurting her anymore. 

His response is to dig his fingers harder into her flesh and keep sliding his cock back and forth while deadpanning, “What? I would fuck your tits, but you don't have any.”

“Fuck you!” she spits back. 

“Maybe I used your needy cunt too many times yesterday and I got bored,” he muses as calmly as he can in between grunts as he thrusts harder and squeezes the flesh in his hands tighter around his cock. She starts struggling, calling him a fucking prick, trying to kick him, but he just keeps looking down at what he's doing, gripping her tight, knowing that she's basically helpless to stop him. He closes his eyes for a moment when he feels his climax creep up on him, making his hips slap her harder and erratically with a wild urgency. “Fuck… Fuck…” he pants while she's still trying to fight him and calling him every unflattering thing she can think of. When he opens his eyes again, he's roaring and looking down at his cum spurting out over the cleft of her ass, settling into the arch of her back and pooling in the cute dimples at the base of her spine. 

He keeps watching, almost hypnotized as his cock twitches with aftershocks of his intense orgasm, until a disgusted and annoyed voice tells him, “Get the fuck off me.” He quickly complies, letting go of her and stepping back. He shakes the fog from his head, wipes a sheen of sweat from his brow, and tucks his cock back into his pants while telling her, “Hold still. I'll clean that up.”

Erna makes a grumbling sound. She doesn't want him to think that she's going to obey him. She wants him to know that she knows what just happened was not okay. Only, out of practical consideration, she also doesn't want to stand only to have cum drip down the backs of her thighs. She huffs to herself as she listens to him leave the room and run the water in the bathroom. She thinks she should stand up and go take a shower instead of letting him clean her off, but, before she can decide, he's back and gently wiping her skin clean with a washcloth, and it's impossible for her to believe what happened minutes ago was real. Whatever that was, it wasn't the Levi she knows. The careful hands pulling her clothes back into place and nudging and gently drawing her up onto the bed to rest are more akin to what she knows of Levi and the transformation is so abrupt and dramatic that as he smoothes his hand over her hair she has to look up at his face and ask, “What the fuck was that?”

He shrugs and caresses her forehead, rubbing the confused wrinkle between her brows away. “Wanted to try something new. You didn't like it?”

She finds it harder to stay angry at him, even though minutes ago she felt like she was being attacked. How could she snap at him for it now when he's being so gentle? She pouts and wipes at the drying salt on her cheeks. “It hurt,” she complains almost feeling bad and selfish for complaining about something he apparently liked. “It still hurts,” she adds truthfully, wincing at how her backside is still aching with a dry burn.

Levi reaches down for the sheets and pulls them over her, saying “Most things I do hurt you, and you usually like them.”

He makes it sound as if she's being irrational, and deep down she wonders if she is, because all she can answer back with is, “It's different…”

He says, “Okay,” as if he's talking to a child, smirking at her as he tucks her in. 

She squeals defensively, wanting to justify her feelings, “I told you to stop!”

“Must not have heard you. I'm sorry.”

He lies down next to her, and she lets him wrap her up in his arms, because she feels fragile and needs him to hold her until she can calm down and put the pieces of herself back together. She doesn't harp on what happened anymore, because he apologized, and, more importantly, she doesn't want him to stop holding her. 

Her brain feels fuzzy as the events that just happened run back through her head and she tries to remember what exactly happened and make sense of it against how comforting Levi is being now. It had seemed like he was really trying to hurt her, not in the way that they both normally consent to, but more twisted and cruel and sinister, but now he's cuddling with her, and she doesn't know what to think, except that maybe her perception of what was happening before was wrong. Did she really tell him to stop? Or did she just think it? It seems so unlikely that he would keep going like he did if she'd actually said it. The confusion makes her more tired, and she closes her eyes, though not before remembering one thing in particular that he'd said and asking defensively, “Do you not like my tits?” seemingly out of nowhere. 

“What?” he murmurs into her hair. 

“You said I don't have any,” she pouts.

“Was teasing you.” Then, he squeezes one and assures her, “I like them small.”

“They're small?”

“Come on,” he moans as he shifts and gets more comfortable. “You knew that.”

She'd actually never thought about it. If anything, she thought she was pretty average, but now she's looking down at her chest and wondering.

“Your ass makes up for it,” he says, and he reaches for it, but Erna flinches and pushes his hand away, still sensitive and wary. He settles for wrapping an arm around her waist and pulling her closer instead, murmuring, “I love your thick thighs.”

Before he can drift off on her, Erna tells him sternly, “Don't smack my ass in public ever again.”

“No promises.”

“Leviiii,” she whines, shimmying back against the pillows and sitting up. She looks down at him, and he opens one eye, peering up at her with a slightly annoyed expression. “I'm serious,” she tells him, crossing her arms. “Don't do it if you ever want to see my ass again.”

Levi turns to lie on his back and puts his hands behind his head. He gives up on trying to take a quick nap, and his face turns cold. “Think about whether you really mean that,” he says, not looking at her, but up at the ceiling, “And be careful about giving me ultimatums.”

She says his name again, softer this time as her stomach sinks. She wasn't that serious, she thinks, at least she didn't think he would take it so seriously. “I didn't…”

“If you would leave me over something that stupid, then you can just go now.”

Erna’s eyes nearly fill up with tears all over again just at the thought, and she has to choke back a sob. “I would never… I'm sorry…”

Levi is unmoved, still expressionless and gazing up at the ceiling when Erna curls herself next to him, clinging to him and whispering through a tight, constricted throat, “I love you. I don't want to leave.”

“Good,” is all he says as his hand reaches for her hair and smoothes her mussed curls. He lets her whimper and cling to him, putting an arm back around her and pulling her in. “Rest a little longer,” he says, “and I'll get you some food and water.”

She sniffles quietly, apologetically nuzzling against his shoulder, and she whispers, “Thank you.”

“Are you still in any pain?” he deadpans.

She lies and tells him no.


End file.
